A Poem To My Son

"Mother, there were elephants,

But we haven't got them now,

And all the rhinos have long gone—

How did we lose them? How?

Mother, there was teeming life

That wandered on this earth,

But now there's just a wasteland—

There is nothing here of worth.

I'll never see a tiger, Mother,

Or hear a lion's roar.

You couldn't save them, Mother dear,

And now they roar no more.

And all those gorgeous forests,

Where the creatures wandered free,

Are replaced with palm plantations

And toxic factories.

Mother, there were oceans

Where dolphins jumped and played;

Gigantic whales and sharks lived there,

But none of them have stayed.

The seas are too polluted

With chemicals and waste.

You couldn't care enough, it seems,

To make a better place.

Mother, there were blue skies once,

And air that you could breath,

But the sky is always grey these days,

With toxins on the breeze.

Do you see this picture, Mother?

Of these giant silver-backs?

Like the chimpanzees beneath,

They're never coming back.

What's happened to the world, Mother,

That you were to bequeath—

A world stuffed full of creatures

And clear blue sparkling seas?

Did you forget to listen?

Did you forget to see?

Why have you left me in a world

Where there's nothing left for me?"

"My son, I saw the elephants.

I saw the rhinos too.

It breaks my heart to see them gone,

Or only in a zoo.

The world was green, and full of life

When I was as old as you.

But when I grew up, I let it die,

And left nothing here for you.

The powerful got greedy.

They had to have the lot.

They seemed to think they owned the world,

When clearly they did not.

So, when the chips were really down,

And good intention spent,

The care we should have taken

With the world just upped and went.

I guess we all decided

It was another's job to do.

We hoped, but we did nothing,

And left nothing here for you.

It wasn't that we didn't care—

It seemed too much to do,

With more than we could solve at once

And live our own lives too.

But when you look at what we lost,

How quickly its demise,

We should, I think, have done much more,

And I apologise.

These books, these screens, are all you have

To tell you of this stuff.

We lost it all because, my son,

We didn't care enough."