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?