I thought I’d start off with a poem I wrote back in the eighties, which could, loosely, be described as looking out for wildlife! My kids have always liked it.
ODE TO AN UNWELCOME GUEST 1981
An earwig crawled into my boot 
And this I did not know
Into this boot I put my foot
And felt it . . . on my toe!
The sudden wriggling tickling touch
Sent shock waves down my spine
In timeless seconds horror grew
As in between my toes it flew
Some alien insect; that I knew
But feared what I would find.
Tarantulas from foreign shores
Or monsters from the pantry stores
“It must be fatal with huge claws”
All raced around my mind.
With frightened haste I pulled my foot
From out of my once trusted boot.
I shook it out upon the ground
And soon the erring earwig found
As out it fell upon the floor
And scuttled straight out of the door.
It little knew what power it had
To make me, for a moment, mad;
And probably it felt relieved
That it had, also, been reprieved!
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I have been much cheered by the response to the first post; which I feared might be too apocalyptic for these sensitive times. But comments have been encouraging (inspiring, realistic etc.)
At the beginning of the year somebody from the World Health Organization (I think) said that 2021 had already been classified as a ‘Famine Year’. So I’m going to risk another poem from the eighties. A Forward to the past that is still, all too relevant today.
AN EVENING’S ENTERTAINMENT
Who’s this staring at me from the TV screen
In between the adverts for the cleanest clean?
It’s a woman and her vacant eyes are staring through my head.
At her shrivelled breast a baby; and it looks as if it’s dead.
And here comes the bluest sparkling whitest cleanest clean.
They say you get the best results with this in your machine
Flashback to the woman with the baby at her breast.
She’s sitting on the stony ground to get a little rest
Along with two million others who have no food to eat.
When you’re dying of starvation you have to rest your feet.
And here comes the newest yummy chocolate crunchy treat.
That healthy looking youngster smiles and says it’s good to eat.
Another child appears but this one’s brown and thin
And her bones look like they’re coming out right through her wrinkled skin
And in her arms she’s clasping a dying baby brother
While her dulling eyes look round for her lost and fallen Mother.
A playful puppy jumps about to give some light relief.
He’ll grow up big and strong on his daily dose of beef.
Now this old farmer’s gazing at the never ending mud
The only scene he’s got since the seeping creeping flood.
It took away his children, his cattle and his wife
And in a few more days it will steal away his life.
But if you want to lose some weight, just take this twice a day.
Those surplus pounds, you soon will find, will simply melt away.
The farmer’s life, and many more, will very soon be gone
They’ve had to leave this world before their chosen course was run.
Their image fades. Uncomfortably, we feel both guilt and grief.
‘Thank God’ we think ‘their suffering is certain to be brief.
If the charities don’t save them, then they’ll very soon be dead.
We can’t help out; so turn the box off. . .then we’ll go to bed’.
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How I wish that poem was an out of date reminder of the past. When the statistics of world food waste are so immoral, I never thought that, more than four decades later, we would still be seeing the world population so divided in their access to food supplies; And nearly all these emergencies are either caused, or exacerbated by war; the ultimate ‘starver’. I’ll finish this post with a short ode; again from my prolific eighties.
DEJA VU
Begone old men
And let us fight our wars
Do not tell us
“Go slow and sure through the deceitful web”
We must taste blood
Before we know the wisdom that is yours
Shout loud our victories,
And quietly count our dead.
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