cartoon by Michael Leunig, of course
Turn away from your animal kind,
Try to leave your body just to live in your mind.
Leave your cold cruel Mother Earth behind. Gaia.
As if you were your own creation,
As if you were the chosen nation.
And the world around you, just a rude and dangerous invasion. Gaia.
Someone’s got to stop us now, save us from us, Gaia!
No one’s going to stop us now.
— James Taylor, Gaia
I walk along the river shore
as crows (with no ‘free will’) sweep by:
just bodies being, nothing more —
you do not need a ‘self’ to fly.
So sorry, world, we’ve come to this:
our fractured species, our disease.
We all know something is amiss —
collapse at one-point-five degrees.
Regretting all we ‘should have’ done.
lost, scared and helpless, ghastly ill,
our long decline has just begun
and most are in denial, still.
I find that, now, I dare not care
about your trauma, dread, and shame.
I know your heart still cannot bear
to hear that no one is to blame.
What can I say? I offer just
compassion, but not empathy.
As all things turn from dust to dust
“the thing to do is just to be”.
The damaged, frightened souls in power
act out their conditioning.
The doomsday clock chimes out the hour:
sixty years since ‘Silent Spring’.
“If only we’d just all done…” more? —
We do our best, and we pretend
it makes a difference, toward
the only way that it could end.
These bodies do what they will do;
they make ‘our’ choices, and retain
the core of us we never knew —
the animal that we remain.
So here’s to deranged apes! We tried
to be what we could never be —
domesticated, civilized,
when our true nature’s wild and free.
And now, I have to go outside —
and smile, and run, and play, and sing.
We’re all just part of Gaia’s slide
of nothing into everything,
(so might as well enjoy the ride).
Fare forward, weary comrades all,
the die is cast, still much to learn
before the heavens start to burn:
Our last hurrah before the fall —
The fire next time. The dragons’ turn.
the animal self