THE RAGE of MOTHER EARTH, a poem

 

How can we calm

Thy rage:

burning forests,

drowning rivers,

melting icebergs

Oh Gaia, oh Terra Mater,

oh Mother Earth

 

What sacrifice will sate:

us, our homes, our children,

the air, the ocean, the soil

How demanding will you be

Oh Gaia, oh Terra Mater

oh Mother Earth

 

When the ordeal ends

will the survivors

be so few

as to be barely noticeable

on the outer skin

of Mother Earth

 

 

NATURE'S REVENGE

 

Nature has had enough

Using what could have been

sweet water and soft winds

to punish Humans

for their wasteful ways

 

The winds destroy

the water drowns

rain disappears

the forests burn

Nature has had enough

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GLOBAL SHRIVELING, a poem

                  The rage of nature

                  the floods of Texas

                  the hurricane of Florida

                  the devastation of Puerto Rico

                  the fires of California

                  Earth’s revenge

                  grimly thrashes

                  with howlinge winds

                  with quaking earth

                  with leaping fires

                  Fecund world into

                  barren fields

                  empty seas

                  broiling suns

                  shriveling mankind

                  (Oct. 15, 2017)

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THE ONLY MONARCH

On the eve of fall, Sept. 21, 2009, my wife Rae spotted a Monarch Butterfly on the Buddleia Butterfly Bush in our backyard on Long Island. She immediately called me to share the wonder of seeing the only Monarch we have seen this summer, and this on the last day of summer.
In the past we have always seen Monarchs, plenty of them, in August at our local town park and in our backyard. This year, we saw very few butterflies of any sort in either place—normally we see many. This summer, we spotted a couple of Black Swallowtails and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails.
I read that the wet, cold spring of 2009 had damaged the butterfly population. Our experience seems to be proof of that. Or, is Global Warming at play in diminishing the butterfly numbers?

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THE RUINS by Scott Smith

X THE RUINS by Scott Smith
Read by Patrick Wilson, who has a nice, clear voice.
(Simon & Schuster Audio)July 2006
Scott Smith goes far beyond the usual horror story in THE RUINS. The book came across to me as a metaphor for global warming as six tourists on a day trip to an archeological site in a Mexican jungle stumble into the jaws of a pitiless adversary.
Smith presents us with six clearly defined characters including a flighty woman, a serious woman, a male weakling, two very strong, resourceful men, and a happy Greek, who doesn’t speak English so he can’t communicate with his companions. In addition there is a language gap between the day trippers and Mayan villagers who try, but fail to warn them of the awful danger awaiting them.
I found myself saying: “This is what I would do” to escape the tangle in which the characters have fallen. That is the mark of a worthwhile author, who draw the reader (or in this case the listener)that far into the story.

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MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM!

MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM!
by Harry Harrison
Both Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! and the 1973 film SOYLENT GREEN are predictors of the squalid future facing the people of Planet Earth through overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources, and pollution. The powerful film, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in his terminal role, flows from the novel, yet the two works of art are the same and very different. Harrison is an effective writer and a master story teller although MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! is flawed by an artificially-written diatribe against opponents of birth control delivered by Sol, a relatively minor character in the novel and a central figure in the film. Harrison could have offered the same information gracefully instead of so awkwardly. In both book and film wise old, exhausted and cynical Sol tells us how beautiful and abundant the earth once was. Harrison plays the role of writer as seer in forecasting that by 1999 the earth will be on the edge of exhaustion in its ability to support humankind. We have managed to make our way past 1999, but now scientists are predicting just as dismal a near future because of global warming. The underlying message of the novel, the film, and the warning of Al Gore and modern scientists is that we are eating ourselves: in the book: through unrestrained birth rates; in modern times: through unrestricted emissions of carbon dioxide from cars, planes, and power plants burning oil and coal products; and in the film: literally by turning human corpses into soylent green, a protein for the masses. I waited in vain for that distasteful food soylent green to be introduced in MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! The soylent green—not in the novel-- turned out to be a contrivance of the script writer, used to hammer home that frightening prophecy of self destruction.

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