Dear Nature
Dear Nature,
I write to you
On behalf of all mankind,
Partly in apology
And partly in plea
To spare those who deserve sparing.
If you must,
Wipe out
Those who don’t.
On this planet
Of water,
Of oxygen
And food
You provide a home
With all we could need.
We could look at the mountains,
The sun rise
And storms,
Awestruck, in wonder
At your beauty and power.
We could witness volcanoes
And earthquakes and floods,
Bowing our heads
With gratitude
For the times when you do not choose to destroy us.
The Grand Canyon,
Uluru,
Everest
And more
Are there as reminders
Of you beauty and craft
In shaping your world –
A world we are privileged to share.
But instead,
We fight wars,
Murdering millions and more
Over money and oil
And land we have claimed
As precious,
Though we do not value it.
In our rush to be wealthy,
We neglect to take care,
Polluting your rivers,
Your land
And your air.
We can’t even care
For the people we love;
The elderly wise, who raised us from birth
And cherished us, as you do
On this planet,
Nurturing with the oxygen of love,
Feeding us
And providing shelter
Through the fruit of their labour.
Do we cherish them back?
Do we nurture them, as they grow old?
No!
We lock them away
As their memories fade,
Or they forget how to walk
And mumble and talk
Of things we can’t see.
We hide them in places,
Conveniently labelled
‘Care Homes’.
Don’t care homes, in reality.
We make excuses
(I heard them just!)
About having to work and bettering ourselves,
Ignoring the scandal of millions
Locked away,
Held captive by their age.
And what do we gain?
All eyes, it seems,
Are fixed on the prize
Of money and comfort,
Of wealth of possessions.
Compassion and caring ignored.
We teach our young that success is material reward.
Stickers and stars
And pieces of card
Saying
“You are the best.”
Glittering prizes to light up their eyes
And train them.
The value of achievement
Is under valued
Or often ignored as a thing in itself.
The reward is the thing.
Go for Gold!
For these things, on behalf of mankind,
I apologise.
And now,
Dear Nature,
You have sent us a final reminder
Of the debt we owe.
A reminder that we are your guests.
And people will die.
And this is my plea.
I plead that you spare
The old and the young,
The sick and infirm
And those who have lived to survive.
With your virus.
If you must make us pay,
Please target the guilty:
The selfish and greedy
Who have put wealth before compassion;
The arrogant and proud
Who have put aggrandisement before society;
Those who would eat to excess
While kicking a man who lives in a blanket
And gazing through a woman wrapped in a scarf,
With out-stretched hand
And pleading eyes.
Your virus is making a distinction
Between who it will kill
And who it will spare.
And I plead with you now
To spare the innocent;
To spare the weak
And vulnerable.
Spare the old, with a twinkle in their eye
And the young with a song in their smile
And wonderment at your beauty
In their eyes.
To finish:
I do not ask for death for the rest.
My compassion will not let me wish upon them
What they have wrought upon others.
But if you must have your victims,
Please re-consider how you choose them,
Dear Nature.
Ava
Sometimes the Universe feels like an empty void you’re shouting into. Like it’s incapable of even returning your screams with an echo. It leaves you with no sense that you’ve even been heard. Not a single promise of anything. Yet, we find ourselves doing it over and over again. Hoping that, this time, your not so secret wish will come true. Or that life will finally start making sense. Or you’ll gain an understanding of why you’ve been through what you have. What purpose it might serve. It’s difficult to consider the probability that there’s no deeper meaning to it.
To begin with I would.....
1. Open a chain of book stores with comfortable sofas and free coffee.
2. Provide scholarships to kids from underprivileged backgrounds.
3. Sponsor unpublished authors.
4. Hire a personal chef .
4. Buy a yacht....a fairly modest one....and sail around the world on the open seas.
