Sunday, January 12, 2020

sustainability




the future beckons

evolution has relied on chance, and on deep time,
to match species with environment,

willy-nilly we now pave paradise,
we can’t wait for chance to help us stumble forward,
we don’t have the time to allow millennia of trial and error
to help us find the way,
our errors threaten to doom us to a path 
where ego trumps rationality,
where lethargy and selfishness trump our better angels,

I seek to hear and follow the wisdom of the selfish gene
who wants to endure, to last into a beckoning future,
I want the best for my grandchildren’s grandchildren,
































































we understand our genes, more than ever before,
and we are tempted to change our plants to better serve us,
maybe to change ourselves to better be us,

I am surer that we should help our culture evolve,
to transcend the tribal, to fit ourselves back into a world
where the whale, the wolf, the tree are part of the family,
where we know “won’t” as much as “will,”











































where the will we write with our lives
designates “sustainability” as the birthright that can endure.

by Henry H. Walker
January 10, ‘20

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