The birds are in such close proximity to each other – resting and dozing on their nests.
The Beautiful limestone cliffs at Bempton.
A preening gannet at Bempton cliffs. Beautiful bird!
The Amazon – Boca De Valeria
Poetry – What have we done to the world?
What have we done to the world?
Just a little tree
Standing on its own
Sending lonely roots
To where others have grown
Just a little tree
Shimmering in the sun
What have we done to the world?
Just a little field
A uniform green
No hint of colours
Where flowers should have been.
Just a little field
Sprayed twice a week
What have we done to the world?
Just a little patch
Where a pond once sat
No room for frog
Or poor water-rat
Just a little patch
Of insignificant crop
What have we done to the world?
Just a lonely boy
In the midst of the wild
Playing on his tablet
An impoverished child
Just a little boy
That nature’s passed by
What have we done to the world?
Opher – 16.6.2021
I pay homage to the great Malvina Reynolds and her song What Have They Done To The Rain.
That was a song written in 1962 that highlighted the danger of radioactive fall-out – in particular strontium 90 – from nuclear tests.
My version extends that to a global view of the devastation we humans are causing to the natural world.
A forest is an interconnecting web of roots and it is now being revealed how much trees communicate with each other. They are meant to be together.
Nowadays our ponds are being filled in, our hedgerows grubbed up and our fields sown with monoculture and sprayed with herbicide and pesticide. They have become green deserts.
Our children do not get to play in nature and learn its ways, to enjoy and respect it. They are impoverished and isolated.
What have we done to the world?
A group of Gannets on a spur! Photos.
Poetry – Nothing is Surplus
Nothing is Surplus
Nothing is surplus
Nothing wasted
Nothing less
Nothing greater
From virus to dinosaur
It is all a piece
Within a giant jigsaw
Opher 23.6.2018
I am always amazed by the way nature interlocks. Evolution has filled every niche with the right choice. They are so complicated and sophisticated. Everything has its place.
More time than we can imagine has created such a wonderfully intricate jigsaw.
What distresses me most is the cavalier way we are dismantling it.
Poetry – The Last Sad Dregs
The Last Sad Dregs
When the last sad dregs are drained
The glass will still retain a residue
No matter how thoroughly we sterilise.
It will just take time.
When everything is finally gone
It will come back.
It has done so before.
But it is never the same.
Maybe next time
It will be even better.
The forms more perfect
The intelligence more pure
Unsullied.
Perhaps it will be
An improvement in every way?
All might agree that it was for the best.
Yet even if it were
That would not forgive us
For what we now do.
Opher 23.6.2018
We are a huge ecosystem catastrophe relentlessly steamrolling nature into nonexistence.
Species after species crashes into oblivion as we seek profit and our numbers spiral.
When we are through and we have destroyed it all there will still be some left even if it is just a residual slime. Evolution will rebuild the spectrum given time.
The planet will once again be full of a myriad of creatures, the wails of sound and flash of colour. There will be creatures every bit as wonderful and exotic as what we now have. It just won’t be the same.
Maybe intelligence, real intelligence, will once again evolve. I don’t think they will forgive us for what we are doing.
Poetry – Two Swifts Shrieking
Two Swifts Shrieking
Two swifts wheeling in the sky
Shrieking with delight –
Not missing their brethren?
In days not long gone
Those same skies
Were full of flocks of screaming swifts.
The air, now a desert,
Teemed with insects
That were scooped with such glee.
There was enough
For many swifts
To gorge themselves and feed their chicks.
Now those insects
Are hard to find
And the future is looking dim.
Do they now shriek with delight or horror?
Opher 23.6.2018
It is so noticeable to me that the skies are emptying. We were so used to seeing the swifts, swallows and house martins, the filter feeders of the skies, putting on their aerial displays.
Where once there were flocks now they appear in pairs. The flocks have gone.
The skies that once buzzed with insects are empty. The insects have gone. There is no food.
The barns and house eaves that provided nesting sites are all knocked down, cleaned up and gone.
It is hard to believe the changes that have taken place in the space of one lifetime.
Were those two swifts really shrieking with delight! I feel they cry in desperation.
Poetry – Leaf and Scale
Leaf and Scale
Leaf and scale
Eye and tail
Precious Precious
Protoplast
Chloroplast
Precious Precious
Bud and tree
Petal and bee
Precious Precious
Fin and feather
Fawn and heather
Special Special
Whale and ant
Fauna and plant
Special Special
Brain and brawn
Shrimp and prawn
Special Special
Limb and life
Husband and wife
Special Special
Awe and wonder
No kill or plunder
Precious Precious
Planet and sky
Sun on high
Precious Precious
Forest and air
Bluebell and bear
Special Special
Water and rock
Hen and cock
Special Special
Earth and worm
Virus and germ
Precious Precious
Warmth and light
Oxygen and sight
Precious Precious
Biosphere
Centromere
Precious Special Unique
Opher 25.6.2018
The whole of our biosphere is one amazing event and utterly unique. Every bit of it is special and precious.
If only we could stand back and see how miraculous it is and worship every last piece of this incredible jigsaw of life.
Instead we treat it with disdain and destroy it with derision, contempt and callous disregard.