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Robert Cheshire Poem
We love to make lists,
To describe, name, number.
How can it have value,
If not on my list.
As logger I stand
Before the green forest,
The numbered trees
Are ones to cut.
The forest cut down
Is only to me
Bigger box to live in,
A shiny new car,
The species I slaughter
Are not for my count,
They appear on
Another mans list.
Naturalists say
We'll not care to,
Protect animals
We're not taught
To love.
But lists stand appalled
At life in the forest,
So long they peter
In our dismay,
Jaguar, Lemur
Capybara, Agouti
Blue Morpho Butterfly,
Tree Toed Sloth.
Tapirs, Ocelots
Even Kin Ka Jous,
Countless insects
Eagles and bats.
Scarlet Macaw,
Reptiles, amphibians,
Snakes and lizards
Too many to count.
Epiphytes, bromeliads
The Bougainvillaea
Ferns, moses, lichens,
Quite without number.
Two thirds of flowering
Plants are found
In rainforests
Going on lists adinfinitum
But do you really care.
Capitalist drivers
Economy must grow
Making it cheap
To maximise profit.
Palm oil a desert
Hard wood for looks
Till next years fashion
Changes the rolls.
Who can make lists
Play the accountant,
If the bottom line
Only shows human worth.
How many species are
Bought for ten dollars,
Balanced in columns
Of profit and loss.
What accountants
Hand or eye could
Frame the aeons
That go to create
The beauty
Of the ecology of life.
Tiny movement
On the wicker chair
Jumping spider
Catches the eye,
Instant spring
Strand to strand.
All its being
Compact perfection,
Taut intent
In the moment of life.
Awed to wonder
Begs the question,
How can anyone
Cut the rainforest
That I learn is,
Though never will see.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
World rainforest
Half of all life was therein
I wanted a biscuit.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
Why do you stand to stare, old man,
Over these fields of grass,
It must be a terrible boring time,
There's nothing here to see.
No, nothing now, but I look with inward eye,
For twenty thousand years did pass
Since I meditated upon this place.
Then was a time before
Mans convenience held sway,
All life bowed before his blade
Of Ozymandien ascendence.
See the mighty herds
Throng all the plain,
The rapt hunter
Every tendons ardour,
For intention, evolutions need.
The air dances under
Gossamer wing, sun delighting
In the dazzling ferment of a
Million colourful insects,
Each a miracle, in
Their congruent niche.
Stand present and see,
Be part of the paragon
Of flight, that is the swift.
Its display of perfect harmony
Brings joy to the soul,
To know life is beautiful
In its own completeness.
Life has come from
Millions of years to bless.
Each form, a piece evolved
To fit the jigsaw of existence.
The mountains rise and fall
In time beyond human mind,
Following on evolutions train.
Infinitely complex are the
Relations each to all and each
To their conditions of life.
But the barman calls time
And Lil will not look up
To smell the roses.
When I get home from work
There's kids to feed,
They don't keep themselves clean,
Who goes to the shop,
The endless miles of
Tarmac don't cover themselves
In little metal boxes.
When do I get to
Have a good time.
I didn't ask for us
To plough the fields and
Scatter death upon the land.
Didn't Abraham give the
Animals of the field, the
Fishes of the sea, the
Birds of the air,
To do as we will.
But that was after the flood,
Edens memory still stands
Of before man came to the plough.
The mono crops of human farm
Evolutions ecology cannot bare.
Evolution is life,
Mechanism and result.
Without the one
There is no other.
Divergence is lifes creed,
Not mans, that occupies
All natures space.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
Once
I roamed the grasslands
Free
Once
Full quick alert vital
Free
Nature framed my existence
Now
Your barbed wire is all
I see.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
Species did die ere man,
In the round of selection,
So many and so long.
What difference now
Should they go?
In trackless time
Lent to adaptation,
A peice succeeds
To its proper slot,
Only displacing
By adjusted gene.
Extinction wrought by man
Plays at no game,
But sweeps all the peices
To the floor.
After so many millions
of years
To be
Now
Out of time
Out of tune
Out of space
Out of place
Out of luck
Out of life
Only because
You make it so.
So whats to do, old man,
If all that was, is lost
To a human field.
Even you cannot
Turn entropies tide.
If morality came
From the divine,
There would be our excuse,
It wasn't us
Who said that we could kill.
But man is creator
Of moral sense,
If it comes at all,
Only to live in good part
With his human kin.
The wolf and the whale
Know that they live.
They know their fellows.
Pain and ecstatic joy
Are part of their life.
We reason that
We alone matter.
That is our fault.
Everything with eyes to see,
Ears to hear,
Many senses
Beyond our own,
Are the consciousness
That gives the universe
Its meaning.
We always discount
What we do not understand,
We cannot see
Through a gorillas eyes.
Precepts must grow
To evolve a morality
That encompasses all life.
While we struggle
Our gilded towers to raise,
Life is destroyed by
Our over wheening mass.
If life is to proceed
Along its evolving path,
Man must grow
To learn control,
Become protector,
All life is here
For all we know.
To be the species,
Like a meteor
Of extinction
Must appal.
We need another story.
For human blessing on life
To be, that each woman
Have only one child,
Till evolutions productive
Glory, restore the earth.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
You argue with me,
Your trees are damaging
Our lovely tarmac.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
We remember you
Promising, but who are we,
To be not betrayed
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
We are the story tellers,
Once of nature loving best.
River and mountain lake and forest
Teaming life of air or land.
We loved the wolf, big hearted proud
The stubborn boar reclusive bear.
Each with spirit man endowed them
To tell of knowing natures worth.
Shaman natures laws need master
Herb law, river, the running deer.
The seasons passing they knew them,
Living with all, wild untamed and free.
To share in stories at end of day.
But Abraham this way came stalking,
Telling stories of a jealous god.
Soul giver only to his chosen
Nature shorn, a play thing made
Hidden in mists behind the vale of tears.
Shaman cast anew to be witches,
For knowing natures secret ways.
Cernunnos, Pan, soon turned to devil,
By prelates of numen promising eternal life.
Nature made wicked will loose its value
When souls stand knocking at heavens door.
Fantastical tales are loved the best
When men will argue of dancing
Angels on the heads of pins,
Or flights of fancy to travel the stars.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
You have named me
The king of beasts
Where crown and sceptre
Hold no tyrants court.
Only balanced nature
Where evolution thrives
Knows I have my place.
I break the chain
Which signifies no title,
Only by weaker link
So life may forge a
New bond to become.
Who shall be called beast
When you are regicide
And life is no more.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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Robert Cheshire Poem
The human animal in its pride.
If a tree falls when
None is by to hear,
Does it make a sound.
More acute creatures than thee,
In thousands throng
Communed to a trees
Glorious life.
Your insolent ear
Fresh grown,
Stands by,
Irrelevant.
Copyright © Robert Cheshire | Year Posted 2019
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