There is much evidence that the Covid-19 disease emanates from a ‘wet’ market in Wuhan China. Here they slaughter wild animals in the market. Blood is spread. Viruses in these animals transfer to humans.
We need a worldwide ban on wildlife farming and illegal wildlife imports!!
The effects of the population explosion are catastrophic for the wild-life on this planet. We are even affecting the climate.
The population is currently in excess of 7 Billion. It is due to double in fifty years. The impact of that is almost unimaginable. Life as we know it will be transformed. The wilderness will be devastated. Natural resources will be depleted. The climate will change forever.
We are sleepwalking towards our own extinction!
Check out the video. I find it terrifying!
An Invisible Machine
I wrote this poem on the way back from a Roy Harper gig in Scotland. We discussed the environmental damage being wreaked upon the world by the selfish, greedy minority who control the capitalist machine that is destroying the planet.
Five billion people live in poverty and despair while a few hundred thousand squander everything in a senseless orgy of extravagance.
The forests, lakes and seas are being consumed. The chimps, elephants and rhinos machine-gunned.
I suggested Roy wrote an epic song on this subject. He told me that he was writing one about what goes on in people’s minds. That is where the madness is conceived!
As we are distracted with booze, sex and TV, religion, psuedodemocracy and talent shows, tribute bands, muzac and nostalgia, fashion, glamour and celebrity, the real world is being ripped apart before our very eyes!!!
I refuse to be stupid!
An Invisible Machine
There is an invisible machine
Relentlessly churning around the world.
Into its maw goes forests, lakes
And whole oceans.
Out of its rear
It excretes plastic trinkets
And control.
Its gears drip with blood and sap.
Sitting astride this behemoth,
This slow-motion holocaust,
The gleeful sneering drivers spray champagne down upon us.
In its wake the controlled
Buy trinkets and are distracted
By the addictive effluent
As they desperately strive to climb on board.
Their dream
Is that they too might live to spray champagne.
When its job is done
And all the wonders have been transformed to junk
It will consume itself.
Opher 18.9.2016
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1474228354&sr=1-2-ent
The Sun was Shining
I woke up this morning.
The sun was shining.
It made the trees dance in their dappled green dresses.
A mellow breeze
Carried the scent of flowers
Across the unending forest.
I watched the birds
Flying between the branches,
Building nests and impressing each other with their song.
Beneath the canopy
Creatures nibbled
On the verdant undergrowth.
The whole of nature
Put on a show
Of interconnecting magic.
But, as the bulldozers started up
And the chainsaws began to scream
I realised it was merely a wishful dream.
Opher – 6.3.2020
When life teemed
Long ago, when there was a fraction of our present numbers, man sailed the ocean in big wooden sailing boats. The world was infinite, the seas raged and there was danger everywhere. The brave men saw death at every corner.
When they spied land they replenished their stocks of fresh water and meat. For simplicity they raided the breeding grounds and took on board tons of carcasses. They captured the huge leatherback turtles and turned them upside down on deck so they had fresh meat, oblivious to the hot sun and suffering. They clubbed the baby seals and birds and left the colonies wrecked. For the supply was endless. It mattered little.
They used live animals as ballast in barrels because it was easier than collecting rocks or digging sand. The animals died in agony and rotted in the holds to be discarded into the sea when port was reached.
Life was cheap. People were heartless. The bounty was never-ending.
Except the planet is not infinite, the stocks are not endless and within a short while the teeming wildlife has been reduced to a fraction of what once was. There is probably less than 1% of what there was a hundred years ago. Billions have died.
This is the first verse of a longer poem I have written about this cruelty and mindlessness. We are busy sowing the seeds of our own demise.
When life teemed
Long timber frames and sail
Bravely crossing oceans
Into the throat of gale and swell
To bludgeon, slash and cruelly stash
The feather, claw and shell.
Opher 29.10.2016
Mother Nature
Pirouetting through the stars
Twirling and spinning
Through the sky.
Her dress of green,
Trailing over hills,
Through forests
And seas.
Her caress bringing creatures to life.
From ice to fire,
Her body is alive
With mystic energy
Stretching over aeons,
Inducing
Enticing,
Evolving
From simplicity to complexity,
From nothing to something.
She smiles upon the universe,
Unique and fantastical.
She cavorts through the ages
Breathing life into the very rock.
Her dreams
Fill the air,
The sea
And the land.
Her breath drives the wind.
Her tears fill rivers and oceans.
Her laughter brings forth laughter.
Her smile lights the sky.
Wounded by her own children
She continues to give
Without blame.
Opher 28.2.2020
Animals Burn
While animals fry and fires burn
The perpetrators never seem to learn.
Lands flood and other lands dry
But some people never ask why.
So, profits are made and trees fall
And they do not care at all.
The lies are spread in a cynical way
And the future looks decidedly grey.
Green laws are repealed,
The truth concealed,
Money stashed,
Habitats crashed.
Time for the great backlash!!
OUR PLANET IS WORTH MORE THAN HARD CASH!!!
Opher -14.1.2020
It was a cold bleak Yorkshire day.
Heavy rain clouds hung on the horizon threatening a torrential downpour but we decided against the rainproofs. The sun was already blistering; the air so heavy with moisture that you could bathe in it. If it rained it would be a relief. We’d be soaked but our shorts and T-shirts would soon dry off. We set off along the rainforest trail to the music of cicadas and unseen birds.
The forest has a sweet scent of decay and vitality. Everywhere there is green – green leaves, green fronds, green lianas and green epiphytes. It feels alive. We are strangers in a new fecund world. We are searching for animals, our cameras at the ready. We find some too.
By the end of two weeks we have photographed sloths, iguanas, turtles, agoutis, parrots, macaws, flycatchers, monkeys, caiman, butterflies, moths and dozens more – each a delight to discover and a wonder to see. We have watched spider monkeys at play and capuchin monkeys cracking open coconuts, sloths slowly clambering through the foliage and huge iguanas, like dragons, clinging to tree trunks.
It felt so alive.
Our skin rusted in the sun and humidity. Our bodies adjusted, sitting on deck watching the jungle slip past, with a cool breeze in our face; rushing to put on our scant clothing to scamper up to the top for the sunrise, to search the deck at first light for giant moths, butterflies and beetles; sorting where to go, down jungle trails, canoe rides, or simply walking around. When in the unfamiliar even the ordinary is extraordinary. It is amazing how quickly one adjusts. This is our new normality.
Slowly we return home. The sun gradually loses its intensity. People take every opportunity to relish the last of its warmth, some asleep on loungers, some reading, some watching the seas for whales, dolphins or seabirds. We have left the tropical heat behind.
Back home we unpack, start on the mound of washing and go for a walk. No shorts, T-shirt and sandals but wrapped in layers of shirts, jumpers and thick coat topped off with hats, scarves and gloves.
Walking down the lane, looking out over the waterlogged green fields I could not help thinking what a mess we’ve made of it. This was the green Yorkshire countryside. Before the industrial revolution a landscape of forest, full of wildlife, now an endless denuded green desert, with just the odd crow and pigeon, plus a few creatures clinging on in the remaining hedgerows.
We live in the vestiges of the wonder of what once was. All over the world 8 billion mouths are busy devouring miracles.
Even in my lifetime I have seen the decline.
The bitter wind bites into my face. Rust is fading as the memories fade, as nature fades, tree by tree, hedge by hedge, ditch by ditch, bug by bug.
I have no camera with me. There is little to photograph. The creatures of my youth have disappeared.
It was a cold bleak Yorkshire day.
Ingleton is a beautiful mountain. I have never approached it from this direction.
I was taken with the way the mood of the place changed with the different light conditions. I took these three shots with different sunlight. 
I have never seen so many pheasants. They seemed to be having a convention.
