Tag Archives: Ecology

Virtual World (Wordle 507)

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Virtual World

Beamed into this lifetime, we’re bitten, bruised and lost,
not knowing it’s a virtual world into which we’ve been tossed.
Reality a spectrum whose limits have been blurred,
how many feel their life is just a thing to be endured?
If that grand player tweaks the board a bit, adding more disaster,
might the game be over an eon or two faster?

If he adds another virus to aids and chicken pox,
If he bundles up more pieces and throws them in the box,
will Earth breathe her final breath at last, gasping, torn and weak?
Is that the master game move? Is that his final tweak?
Or will the game start over with new rules the next round?
And will the moves go smoother once new game pieces have been found?

 

Wordle prompts today are: beam, virtual, box, bruise, bit, lost, spectrum, torn, tweak, bundle, breathe and time. HERE is the link to read other submissions for this prompt. Image by Robert Coelho on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

Plum Pit, Apple Core

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ecologyeco

Plum Pit, Apple Core

Never saw an apple tree, never saw a plum
that I didn’t want to reach out and get me some.
Bite into the fleshy fruit. Chew around the pit.
Spit it out into my hand to get rid of it.
Dig a hole to bury it. Smooth it with my heel
to grow another fruit tree for a future meal.

Such a simple motion in a world grown gross—
most folks isolated, fearfully morose
about  nature’s rebellion against humankind.
Reaching deep within her and taking what we find
without giving back again—everybody keen
on scraping out her riches with some grand machine.

For manifold acts of mankind, dangerous and mean,
nature has not found an adequate vaccine.
But, by giving back again, we signify devotion
to start to rectify our sins with a simple motion.
Let’s help her out by simply remaining aware
that each and every one of us needs to start to care.

By every single action, let’s demonstrate our wills
to rectify our heedlessness, atone for all our ills.
For everything that we take out, putting something back.
To therein change our dangerous course and take another tack.
Just a simple gesture, signifying more.
Building back our world pit after pit, core after core.

We talk about solutions, never coming close—
spewing words not actions, maddeningly verbose.
But if every person just took their life in hand,
polluting less, enriching their surrounding land,
perhaps we’d shift the balance, tree by tree by tree,
restoring our world to what it’s meant to be.

Prompt words today are plum, motion,  vaccine, verbose and never. 

The Graffiti Artist

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Graffiti Artist

Such errands as having to go to the store
to get milk for one’s mother can be a big bore.
Then I spot a blank wall that alters my view
of what I’ve been sent to the corner to do.

My mind shifts a cog and memory grows faint
as I forget the milk and instead buy spray paint.
I’ve abandoned my purpose and lost my perspective
to scrawl on the wall these words of invective.

It’s not that my sentiments are hocus-pocus.
It’s simply that I have shifted my focus.
I don’t prevaricate, for though they’re ruthless,
let it not be said that my statements are truthless.

What some see as defacement, others see as art,
but this is never my goal from the start.
When I have a thought, I just want to share it.
Some put it on T-shirts and then choose to wear it,

but I want it bigger. I have to shout.
My feelings require a wall to get out!
So please look at the message and if you must blame
someone for graffiti, just look at the name

of the politician that I am exposing
for graft and corruption or lying or posing.
He’s the real villain. I’m only the one
who’s revolting with spray paint instead of a gun!!!

Prompt words for today are prevaricate, focus, abandoned, scrawl and perspective. All photos of graffiti thanks to Unsplash. Used with permission.

Unwrapped Gift

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Unwrapped Gift

You thought life had an itinerary all mapped out and planned?
You thought it was a deck of cards, all dealt out and fanned?
You’d play this card, then that one and win the game with ease?
Fate saw your plan and chuckled and brought you to your knees.

So much for jubilation, for celebration and
your misapprehension you’d been dealt a winning hand.
Humanity is just a part of Nature’s total plan.
Evolution didn’t end when she invented man.

In one hand she holds her sketch pad, in the other an eraser.
One she uses to create herself, the other to efface her.
One creation a success, another a mistake,
Our triumph’s not the only choice that she has to make.

It’s time for the whole human race to eat its humble pie
and align itself with nature, or make the choice to die.
Nature’s not here to conquer. It’s here to show the way.
The truth of that’s the gift that we must learn this Christmas Day.

Prompt words today are humanity, itinerary, celebrate and jubilation.

Red-Tailed Hawk

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Red-Tailed Hawk

Through the air high up above the graceful soarer weaves,
his shadow cast against the wall and stones and grass and leaves.
Without a modicum of sound, he drifts and circles ’round.
If those below detect him, it will not be by sound.

He seems to simply levitate, on wings lacking in motion,
betraying not one sign of his means of locomotion.
Below small dirt volcanoes betray presence of prey.
Small denizens of tunnels emerge from them each day.

Opting for the light after so many hours below,
darting back to safety when a human comes to mow,
they steal the seed corn, sheer the roots, consume the tender shoots.
As often as the mounds are  pressed flat by heavy boots,

the next day there’s another to take each burrow’s place.
Always another obstacle for opponents to face.
What act is fair for man to take in thinning nature’s riches?
What will I do to rid my lot of undersurface ditches?

The neighbors mount a protest, asking for an end
to creatures that usurp their space, and still I do not bend.
But here there is a creature who merely by its will
has the means to swiftly dip and fall upon its kill.

When the Red-Tailed Hawk dips low, watching from above,
I shudder as the claws surround the vole’s form like a glove.
Wings flapping for the lift-off, caught in sun’s early ray,
the bird with prey in claw now lifts and opts to fly away.

Their shadow soars onto my lawn over the wall between,
the prey it’s holding as it lifts too tiny to be seen.
Nature will deal with nature. It needs no intervening.
It is a way that our world has to deal with its own gleaning.

Image from Unsplash. Prompt words today are weaves, modicum, opt, blame and levitate.

Three Seconds of Truth

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Extraordinary if True!!

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If this is really feasible, it could be what saves our world.

Voting Our Destruction

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Voting Our Destruction

Some birds will still sing and flora abide
no matter what human might reside
in the colorless house with the POTUS inside.
But not so for those that have already died.
In the past year, seven more
have ceased to run or swim or roar.

The outcome of our land and sea,
each animal , insect and tree
depends on policies they make.
Will Earth survive or will we bake
on the spit of reckless choices,
protests made by unheard voices?

Will we find, at end of day
we’ve voted our kids’ lives away?
These are the species lost to us
in last year’s sparring, useless fuss:

                      • Sumatran Rhino. …
                      • Chinese paddlefish. …
                      • Yangtze giant softshell turtle. …
                      • Indian Cheetah. …
                      • Spix Macaw. …
                      • Catarina Pupfish. …
                      • Indochinese tiger

What new denizens will perish
from this Earth we say we cherish?
Yet we vote its life away
And we’re the ones who’ll have to pay.

 

Today the loss of species is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times than that of the natural extinction rate. WWF reports that between 0.01% and 0.1% of all species go extinct every year. Considering the fact that there are around two million species on the planet, it means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. And note, we are talking about species of which humans are one.

As per the 2018 report of World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), there’s a 60% decline in the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians in just 40 years. As per the IUCN Red List, more than 30,000 species are threatened with extinction, which means 27% of the nearly 1,12,000 species accessed so far are under grave danger.

In the past ten years, 33 plant species have become extinct. The species listed above in my poem all vanished in 2019. I was unable to find a list for 2020.

 

Prompt words today are flora, outcome, fated and reside.
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Well Worth Watching: Wake Up Call

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Read the Signs

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Read the Signs

Days of wild adventure, pulsing with delights
are turning into zombie days that fade to zombie nights.
Nothing on our agendas. No traveling, no dates—
our calendars reduced to onerous empty slates.

It does no good to protest. God hears not when we ask.
We merely have to don that necessary mask.
Though every instinct urges camaraderie,
Mother Nature warns us that she will wait and see.

Will we clean up our messes? Put out every fire?
Calm her winds of warning before we all expire?
Ban plastic from her oceans, stop digging for black gold?
Cool the global warming and restore the cold?

If we will not listen, she’ll only turn deaf ears
to all our present pleadings, to all our future fears.
Oh foolish foolish children, just dealing with effects
instead of paying heed to what nature expects.

 

Prompt words today are instinct, nothing, protest, onerous and zombie.