A Nature Lover's Diary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

All my life I have been both fascinated and appalled by the way nature and human nature have so much in common in terms of natural beauty and an inclination for violence; we may well put the latter down to the survival of the fittest, but does that make it right and if so, right for whom? Not the rabbit pounced upon by a fox or the fox ripped to pieces by hounds nor the mentally ill taunted to distraction by an ill-informed society or the elderly person similarly deprived of due care because they are considered expendable …

A teacher once put to the whole class that nature and human nature have more in common than most of us would care to admit; no one responded. Even so, it still rings as true as it did to a 16 year-old wannabe poet all those years ago.

A NATURE LOVER'S DIARY

Watched, such living woods at night,

as hear nightingales sing, watch
blackbirds to the nest homeward fly,

a shooting star prick an owl’s wing,

even trees sweeping stars from the sky;

Seen, a hare outrunning a fox, a badger 
outwit its baiting (now and then),

moles defying blindness, bats come out
to play, fireflies dissembling, Man
in the Moon descending to snuggle up 
to a sleeping swan;

Walked, the same living woods by day,

released rabbits caught in cruel  traps,

seen poachers retrieve,would bag more,
but for the flapping of Time on wing;
Witnessed, a fox catching up with its prey,
ripping it to pieces, redcoats with dogs

bred to set up a kill for the sheer fun of it
while those in authority turn deaf ears
to animal rights protesters, marking us all
for nuisance creatures, media ever homing in
for all the wrong reasons

Nature, humanity, come owl's cry or lark's lay,
but prey to winds of the day ...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007; 2016

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears under the title ' A Nature Lover’s Dream’ in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007.]