The planet is amazing with a precise order about things- everything knows what it is doing, like ants marching to their nest. Watching six workmen in Kennington peer into their massive trench, scratching their heads and looking confused about what to do next, reminded me that we haven’t got a clue what we are doing to the planet. We are out of control. We dabble with things, break them and upset the natural rules. Like performing open heart surgery fifteen hundred metres below sea level, BP are trying to mend what they have already broken in the middle of the deep sea. Eleven men have died and scores of animals are gulping in the peculiar blood coloured surface water, and the Vice President of BP said they were capturing a hundred thousand barrels a day – any more would risk contamination with water. This must represent a turning point for US energy policies and our over-reliance on fossil fuels. There may even be a revolt over BP’s massive error, experimenting with our planet. A black mark the size of Luxembourg in the Gulf of Mexico has led to one group clamouring for the ‘death penalty’ for BP. The natural order of the planet has a harmony that is impossible to replicate. We must learn from this and know that we lose this at our peril. Ants have been marching their path, bees have been dancing their dance and European Eels swimming their miraculous life swim from the Sargasso Sea for millions of years, and yet the precarious technique of deep sea oil drilling has only been going for fifty years.
Almost a touch of badly needed ecopoetry here. Yes, over a few thousand years we have blundered our way miraculously to the top of the food chain. Only now there are so very many of us hungry blunderers. And we are sawing through the very branches on which we sit. Please submit a transition poem to the Transition Leytonstone poetry competition – more info at http://www.projectdirt.com/events/transition-poetry-competition