The dverse haibun prompt is in honour of Earth Day. What a joke. Whose turn is it tomorrow?
Instead of wandering lonely, looking at clouds, drooling over daffodils, extasising over the blackbird’s song, walk along the main road in the dust and fumes of the traffic, among the detritus tossed from car windows, past the open sores of cheap tacky businesses more tape worm than ribbon development. Instead of getting in your car and driving to somewhere pretty, look at the ugliness of our daily existence, the havoc we wreak with landscape, the tractored and poisoned fields, the bunkers where animals exist for their short terrible lives. Just look at that and ask, is this the earth I want?
bird in the field
searching for a stray worm
each brood one chick less
The Four Swans 
Oh, I know that walk along the main road and the detritus tossed from car windows – we once saw someone throw a full nappy out of a car window! Has it really come to this?
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People don’t care. They want a road to drive on and what’s beyond the window isn’t important. The whole world is beyond the window!
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I live in a pretty undeveloped area. There are still problems, but many fewer than when I lived elsewhere. I remain careful not to submerge myself into a false sense of security. It will soon catch up to all of us.
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We, all of us in the rich parts of the world, are spared the full effects of the infernal engine we’ve set in motion. It’s places like the horn of Africa, the Ganges Delta, Amazonia and Indonesia where the destruction of the environment or climate change has accelerated where all life forms are dying in their millions.
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I haven’t seen the prompt, but this seems like an appropriate response. We are moving backwards fast from that first earth day in 1970. (K)
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Just the idea of having an Earth Day makes me miserable. How many in the rich world will turn off a few unnecessary lights, or put a plastic bottle or two in the recycling bin and feel as if they’ve just been to confession and received a life time’s absolution?
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The list of what people are actually willing to give up is very small.
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Like Lent. In the Middle Ages, since people had very little to give up anyway, it was close to starvation rations for 40 days. Now the faithful give up chocolate and think that earns them the golden ticket.
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That made me laugh. But it’s true.
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Our ideas of comfort/hardship have evolved.
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The joke is on us and it isn’t funny, Jane…
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Not at all, but especially not for the people on the front line. We are the ones who are driving the planet to destruction, but it’s the poorest countries of the world that are bearing the brunt of our selfishness.
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This is what comes from feeding the wrong wolf. A searing, yet accurate, portrayal of our collective apathy.
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Thanks Frank. It would be laughable if it wasn’t tragic, but there are so many people in the privileged parts of the world who think they are being incredibly generous with their efforts if they sort out their rubbish.
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This is so true Jane as always you tell it as it is. …As Freddie Mercury wrote Oh-oh, is this the world we created?
We made it on our own
Is this the world we devasted, right to the bone?
If there’s a God in the sky, looking down
What can he think of what we’ve done
To the world that He created? 💜
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It’s like all these ‘Day’s, it’s just virtue signalling. We’re in the hands of the multinationals and all they’re concerned about is profit.
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That’s a brutally true line, Jane…
~David
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I’m having great difficulty with ‘fun’ reactions to almost anything. I don’t understand how people can walk around anywhere thinking ‘fun’ thoughts.
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