A plea for our poorer relations
by cricketjeff on August 9, 2008. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
The red uakari is threatened by man,
His domicile shrinks every day.
You can’t find his name on the landowners plan,
These fools think he stands in the way.
This innocent creature, a primate like you,
Will surely be better confined in a zoo.
It seems that by logging some rich men grow fat,
The timber sells well further North.
It’s a shame evolution’s not coping with that,
Forget about nature henceforth.
These tropical hardwoods are what we demand,
The loggers grow fat on the price they command.
“The Amazon forests are simply immense,
We don’t have to worry at all.”
The words that the guilty will use in defence,
As trees in the forest still fall.
Our juvenile antics condemn us to die,
The price of inaction is surely too high.
Each year there’s less wilderness, soon there’ll be none,
Its facile to say it ain’t so.
A change in our policies hasn’t begun
To alter the future we know.
Evasive excuses are all that we hear;
Agreements to meet again year after year.
The monkeys still congregate high in the trees,
To gather Brazil nuts and feed.
Instinctive and secretive, passed by with ease,
The innocent victims of greed.
Don’t sit on your hands when we all are to blame,
You have to demand there’s an end to this game!
Author notes
Using ten words from the following list, a poem born of a quote and a
photograph.
1 facile,2 primate,3 evolution, prosimian, carnal, carmine,9 secretive, chisel,
10 instinctive,4 evasive,cinnabar, relation, salivate, instigate,8 congregate,5
immense, dispense,6 domicile,7 juvenile, rubescent, descendent, descendant
English