The Angry Poet

An Angry ManSometimes, when anger wells up inside us, an outburst can actually do more harm than good.

But when it’s wrapped in poetry, the power is conserved but the harshness is somehow diluted, allowing the message to get through without causing an aggressive backlash.

Here’s a poem that encapsulates some of the anger I feel about climate change …

 

Mr Angry

My practice is that of a Buddhist
For practice makes perfect they say
So why do I still get so angry
When resources are frittered away?

The Earth has a finite collection
Of minerals, water and air
So why are we all quite so blasé?
It’s almost like nobody cares

They hoover the bed of the oceans
Till every fish has been caught
Then they freeze ’em till prices go mental
‘Cos profit’s their first and last thought

They cut down the trees in the forests
The lungs of the world it’s been said
To make palm oil for everyone’s cookies
Pretty soon Planet Earth will be dead

We marched in the sun at the seaside
In the hope that somebody would hear
Our demands that our leaders take action
To reverse all the climate change fears

But I fear for my grandchildren’s future
On a planet we all have sucked dry
They will never ever forgive us
When they find we’ve condemned them to die

Richard Blake © 2014

All Together?

NatureA sense of being part of the great all-inclusive life prompts us to reflect on our own place and on how we ought to live. Guarding others’ lives, the ecology and the earth is the same as protecting one’s own life.

By like token, wounding them is the same thing as wounding oneself. Consequently, it is the duty of each of us to participate as members of the life community in the evolution of the universe. We can do this by guarding earth’s ecological system.

~ Daisaku Ikeda

Gardener’s World

Ten WorldsAll this gardening, and tending the soil, has got me thinking about how the Earth, and the earth, and us, the people who walk on the earth are all connected.

A sense of being part of the great all-inclusive community prompts us to reflect on our place in it and on how we ought to live. Protecting other’s lives, the ecology and the Earth is the same as protecting our own life.

By similar token, wounding them is the same thing as wounding ourselves. Consequently, it is the duty of each of us to participate as members of the living community in the evolution of the Universe.

We must do this by protecting and cherishing Earth’s ecological systems. Not to do so would be the most extreme of follies.

The Greenest Of Issues

The Global CommunityA sense of being part of the great all-inclusive community prompts us to reflect on our place in it and on how we ought to live.

Protecting other’s lives, the ecology and the Earth is the same as protecting our own life.

By similar token, wounding them is the same thing as wounding ourselves.

Consequently, it is the duty of each of us to participate as members of the living community in the evolution of the Universe.

We must do this by protecting and cherishing Earth’s ecological systems. Not to do so would be the most extreme of follies.

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