Image From Book Review of Fritjof Capra's The Web of Life:

A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems

Web of Life

It has been, perhaps, only 2 billion years,

of our Earth's 4.5 billion year long life.

That bacterial sized growth took hold,

in hot niches facing great, terrible strife.

But with each great extinction,

caused from turmoil without,

or turmoil within, life continued,

to grow, mutate and sprout.

Its forms growing more complex,

with each millennium survived,

each one dependent upon the other,

in a fragile web form that arrived.

Into myriad variations from bacteria,

insects, plants and animals thrived.

But as the Earth turned and changed,

some thrived, but most, eventually died.

Through good fortune our species,

finally arrived about 200,000 years ago.

Ignorant and fearful at first, we hung on,

only civilization's discovery made us glow.

We created religions to quell our fears,

leaving the whispering of nature for other ears.

Declaring our dominance over all things,

so that we could gather wealth our work brings.

But our success has become too much to bear,

while we quibble over details the answer is in the air.

If we don't do something quickly we will be in great peril,

the air will not help us when we've gone too far.

The web of life is unraveling at a rapid rate,

while we are still killing with our lifestyles of late.

Unless we all get very interested in nature's plight,

underpinnings beneath us will give us hell's night.

The web of life will start over and reassemble the strands,

but we will not be there to manipulate with our grand plans.

Copyright 2022 © Ronald W. Hull

8/4/22

You can read and print this poem at my website here.