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Green laws are repealed,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.
I find Pete Seeger a bit of an enigma. Some of the songs he sings are twee and the sing-alongs are crap but then there is the harder side. The man speaks out against wrong, writes songs of great social import, was a staunch environmentalist and was prepared to suffer for what he believed in. He would not be moved.
His version of Which Side Are You On is skin tingling. (This isn’t the best version)
Pete was in the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and learnt a lot from Woody’s genius and uncompromising ways.
Here’s a few of my favourite quotes of Pete’s.
If there’s something wrong, speak up!
If only more people did that. If only more people became involved. We might get more things done.
It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.
If we don’t engage with people who think differently we cannot learn what they think and we cannot learn what they think. Mutual respect is crucial. If you want to change somebody’s mind you have to talk to them.
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.
Education is the answer to most problems. We have to teach people to think, understand and develop empathy and compassion.
Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live.
Being generous of spirit gets you abused by some – but that’s worth it. If you aren’t open and trusting your spirit suffers.
I’m still a communist in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer – I think that the pressures will get so tremendous that the social contract will just come apart.
I can see it all unravelling now with Brexit, Clinton and Trump. There is a new cynicism with politics and the establishment. The inequality is too great. People have had enough. We aren’t all in this austerity together. Some have never had it so good.
I came along and was a teenager in the Depression, and nobody had jobs. So I went out hitchhiking, when I met a man named Woody Guthrie. He was the single biggest part of my education.
He’s been a big part of my education too. He taught me to think, care and appreciate the world. He taught me that poor people matter as much as anyone else.
Deserts
I was travelling back from London on the train, belting past field after field of stubble. The harvest was in.
The only things moving were the odd crows and pigeons.
This was England. Where once used to stretch unbroken, dense forest, rustling to the sounds of insects, trilling to bird call, and providing food for deer, wild boar, bear and wolf, there is now a monocultural desert.
We have systematically cleared the forest to farm the land. The animals were cleared with it. We left tiny oasis of wasteland, woods, hedges and ponds in which the remnants of the rich fauna hung on – rabbits, hare, hedgehogs, newts, lizards, slow-worm, grass snake, dormouse and linnet.
Now they are being cleared. The modern farm equipment has no use for hedge or pond – the bigger the field the better.
Anything that dares to intrude into the desert we create is eliminated with pesticide, herbicide and machine. We don’t need them. They get their just deserts.
Deserts
Travelling through deserts
Filled with lifelessness –
Devoid of anything,
Even pity.
All that moves
Is the enemy
To be eradicated
With alacrity
Big or small
Feather or fin
There’s no room at the inn.
Hedge and pond
Bush and tree
Ripped out
In monocultural crime
Megafauna,
Microfauna,
Weed and seed,
All past their prime.
Opher 12.9.2016
If you want to check out my books –
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1474040136&sr=1-2-ent
‘The animals and plants have nobody to speak up for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.’ – Gerald Durrell 1972.
Gerald Durrell is one of my heroes. He was a naturalist who loved animals. He wrote about his early life on Corfu in the 1930s where he lived with his eccentric family and lived an idyllic life with all the animals he collected.
It was a life I could relate to. I spent my childhood wandering the fields, climbing trees, wading through ditches and ponds and collecting caterpillars, newts, frogs, toads, snakes, lizards and slowworms.
Gerald was passionate about conservation. He set up his Wild-life Park as a conservation project that came straight out of his love of animals. He, like me, was utterly distraught by the cruelty and mindless destruction of nature. He did what he could to conserve it.
I don’t like zoos. I don’t like wild animals being confined in unnatural environments for people to ogle at. But I was taken with this wild-life park.
Gerald Durrell was someone I would love to have met.
Gerald Durrell’s house
A photo of Gerald that reminded me of one of me when I was a similar age holding a chimp.
Space
Once there was enough space
Now we’re in competition
The planet is too small
Seems there’s no room for us all.
We cannot make it bigger
So we have to learn to use less
And leave sufficient
For those
We share this haven with.
There is room enough
For us all prosper
If we could only learn
To respect and share.
Opher – 4.1.2020
Everywhere I look there are too many people taking too much. Nature is being screwed back into a tighter and tighter corner.
8 billion is too many.
We are not alone. We share this precious jewel with many millions of other species. It’s time we started treating them with the respect they deserve. Our arrogance will be our downfall.
Salvation
The salvation of nature
Must surely be our priority.
The mesmerising spectacle
Is too precious,
Too rare,
And unique
To squander –
Yet delicate, and
Vulnerable.
With our pesticides
And chainsaws
We leave
Swathes
Of destruction.
With our guns,
Our knives,
Hooks and nets
We destroy
Their flesh,
Impoverish populations;
Imperil the web
On which
We all depend.
We are endangering
Our own future.
Opher – 4.1.2020
Life on this planet has evolved over millions of years into a complex interconnecting web. We are all so interdependent. Yet, we come crashing through with our big boots, crushing and impaling, mindlessly destroying the very thing that gives us life.
Put aside the pain and suffering: is it worth selling the future for trinkets?
