The Earth and Us

For millennia I think we thrived

In harmony with nature, we survived

Natural disasters, war and famine

Finally created the Anthropocene

Somehow somewhere along the way

The erroneous notion came into play

That the earth and all its non-human creatures

Were created for our benefit, its myriad geographic features

Were for us to exploit, first for our needs

Then for our comfort and finally for our greed

We came to believe, for lack of opposition from other life forms

That we were superior, the rest of the world had to conform

To our clever ideas, of which of course we had no dearth

We were the undisputed emperors of the kingdom of earth..

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The laws of nature dictate that every action

Should have an equal and opposite reaction

We’ve exploited the earth to an extent immense

We can see signs of the consequence-

In pandemics, flash floods, forest fires and more

We’ve angered the Earth down to its core

Not that the clock can be reversed completely

But a more sustainable way of living is possible definitely

We are getting wake-up calls we should heed

To re-evaluate our balance with nature is what we need