Poem by Charlie Sayers
At the start, the voices were small.
Trying to tell us in their own special way.
The moan of a whale, the shriek of an ape,
A polar bear barking for ice.
The voices grew louder, some humans joined in.
Naturalists, activists, making a din.
“The lungs of the world are shrinking”.
“Big fish are precious to us”.
“It's real, it's coming, it's urgent”.
They weren’t just making a fuss.
We lied to ourselves,
We covered our eyes,
We pretended it just wasn’t there.
Our world that wasn’t just ruined,
But quoted as being “destroyed”,
By a certain old man in his nineties
And a sixteen-year-old girl in her prime.
The voice of creation speaks loud and clear:
“Stop.
Slow down.
Let our balance be the light.”
Our neanderthal fragility,
The key to sustainability.
We have to use our inner sense,
We cannot blame our innocence.
Two things that seem so similar and yet are miles apart.
Miles apart from nature,
Is where we’ve been for years.
NOW is the time to change that,
Find its rhythm in our souls.
Fossil fuels, pollution, rewilding habitats.
No matter how we do it,
The secret is to ACT.