"We are as much strangers in nature,

As we are aliens from God.

We do not understand the notes of birds;

The fox and the deer run away from us;

The bear and the tiger rend us.

We do not know the uses of more than a few plants.

Is not the landscape,

Every glimpse of which hath a grandeur,

A face of Him?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I very sadly continue to wander our world,

In these very greedy, chaotic, self-centered times,

I wonder why we destroy so much that He has given,

And I wonder why so few even care about these crimes.

We now level glorious life-capped hillsides,

To make way for yet another shopping mall;

We invade and we decimate precious wetlands,

Destroying ecosystems, and very few are appalled.

We build yet more ugly subdivisions on once rural land,

We destroy wild plants we know absolutely nothing about;

We construct aesthetically pleasing corporate office ponds,

Then when waterfowl arrive, we soon kill or chase them out.

We greedily harvest far too many life-giving forests,

Scattering their woodland inhabitants to the four winds;

We bulldoze, poison, root out, and destroy our neighbors,

Which could truly be one of mankind’s most egregious sins.

We very callously pollute our planet’s oceans, lakes, and rivers,

Our industrial waste kills aquatic life species each and every day;

I sadly wonder if we will ever be more than Parasites in Paradise,

And I wonder if our offspring will have a most hideous price to pay.

I sadly wonder if our gluttonous, greedy, modern behavior,

Will one day far too soon commence our planet’s death knell;

And I wonder if this once green, vibrant, God-given, Paradise,

Will one day soon, become our children’s dead, abysmal, Hell.

Webster’s Definition of a Parasite:

‘An organism that grows, feeds,

And is sheltered,

By another organism,

And contributes nothing,

To the survival of its host.’

þ2007, Mr. Ed