Still Time

I wonder, by the riverside 
while following the swirling tide
of human filth, spilled far and wide:
Is there still time to save us?

The factory’s putrefaction stench
and farmed manure, in ditch and trench
add to the rot, compound the stench:
This is no way to save us.

Yet somehow, it is not despair
but strength, in nature’s song I hear,
(while in the quiet, I lend an ear)
that there’s still time to save us.

Forget-me-not, and primrose patch
along each hedgerow, hollow, hatch
join the refrain, take up the catch,
that there’s still time to save us.

And every sparrow, wren and finch
in every bough, on every branch
from riverbank to picnic bench
sings, “There’s still time to save us!”

It is with a mixture of despair and hope that I witness the unfolding of spring in the north of England. Rivers flowing with s**t, because all environmental protections seem to have been removed by the current government; new roads being built where they are not needed; factories and farms spilling out pollution. There doesn’t seem to be any political will to change, and most people don’t even seem to notice, or to care. I wonder what it will take to make people wake up? I expect something sufficiently awful, on the order of famine, flood, or war (perhaps all three). I hope it doesn’t come to this. The birds and the bees that remain continue to get on with the business of life as they always have. We have much to learn from them. If only we’d care to listen.