Earth Day 2013

Today being earth day I present this poem to you written by one of our best family friend Eric Hausker (he really writes awesome poems but never publishes them!!). Most of us gardeners already know about climate change, pollution and habitat destruction. So, on this earth day we can try to take pledge to help mother nature and her bounties. It has to be small as most of us (especially me) will not have money, resources or time to do anything big. I have been sitting and thinking what to do but nothing is coming in my mind. Almost all the small things that I can afford, I do -- chemicals inside or outside of house banned, growing organic, creating wild-life friendly front and back yard, recycle, reduce and reuse and becoming vegetarian. But there must be other things to do. Can you help? Do you have any suggestions/ideas or anything coming to your mind that I (we) can do?


Earth Day by Eric Hausker

I think that we began to sense
Before this decade was half-way thru
That Optimism will no longer carry us
That venerable ways of thinking
may bury us
Perhaps the world now apprehends
That admonishments from forty years ago
are proving true
That now our dreams and aspirations
must be cast anew


Imperceptibly something has changed
We gaze upon our structured realms
And fear that they hang by a slender thread
We know that there is much to dread
Our hope-filled future is slowly drained
Unless wiser hands can guide our helm
Paradigms and doctrines must be allowed to die
As hunger spreads throughout the tropics
and oceans rise


We awaken to the troubling fact
That for centuries our cleverest minds
Were less enlightened than they should have been
Not all their teachings will stay intact
Their gifts to us did raise us up
But also served to undermine
Our benighted world as it tries to mend
Honored creeds once writ in stone
must fade from memory
Just as mighty glaciers have been swallowed
by the sea


I hold a faded brochure in my hand
It bears a wistful poignancy -
"Project Survival 1970"
At Northwestern University we met
Discussing all night as the title evokes
The Great Winnowing, The Great Revising
Of The Human Purpose
Which could have been joined to the latent hopes
Of a yearning and eager population
Whose willingness to act lay near the surface
Since then have been born two generations
Our claims on our planet are still rising
And will soon transcend and dwarf their present scope


Those whom we choose to lead us are fully compromised
Rather,
It is we who love the birds and forests
who will ultimately decide
The world on which our great-grandchildren's children
Will soon tread
There is much to renounce, and not much time
May theirs be a planet where ravishment ends
and all are fed.


I could not put in all the styles/designs (like line shifted in certain ways) like he has as I am not good in html-coding. I hope you will like the poem as I like it very much, especially the last stanza. Happy Earth Day All