Poem Review: Nature is Us
I am normally averse to write single poem reviews. But this time, the situation called for an exception, because the poet I want too honor to is exceptional.
Desiree Driesenaar is a friend and a guru for me. Her prolific and deep writings apart, I revere her optimism and love for life.
Three weeks ago, in her LinkedIn post, Desiree disclosed her condition and that her prognosis is full recovery.
As my thoughts circled around her, I felt that my tribute to her as a contemporary and a fellow-tribe member would make us all appreciate her presence in our lives.
Her words…
My body is not stuck in the past though. My body has some challenges to attend to. So, I do my best now to be a brave patient. A patient patient. Phew. Patience was never my big talent…
However, I do enjoy the moments with my loved ones. And the students I still meet online. What a huge amount of time we get when we loosen ourselves a bit from our work….
Her words mean a lot to me. Us. An inspiration.
The poem that she wrote two years ago brings the profundity of how we are part of nature. Nature grows, infects, heals and recycles. Nature is resilient. Nature is Us. The resilience that she is showing her poems, is the resilience that she is showing in her life.
Poem: Nature is Us
Nature is us.
Nature is
so much more than a walk in the park
or a picnic down the river.Nature is our daily lives.
And how we live them
in harmony
or fighting.Among green leaves
and concrete slabs.We can rip off the branches
and hurt our fellow-plant-beings.Or we can dance
concrete softer.Hear the music, my friend,
and dance, dance, dance.
Commentary:
Nature is our mother, teacher, feeder and God. We have in ourselves to relate to Nature, because we are Nature and part of Nature.
Nature is us.
Nature is
so much more than a walk in the park
or a picnic down the river.Nature is our daily lives.
The stars and planets, the sky and the sea were there before us, and will be there after us. Yet, we feel that we are immortal and all powerful. It is in our minds that we feel that we are creators ourselves. This feeling feeds and fuels our egos, and our egos in turn alienate us from Nature.
We are now aliens in our own planet, out of tune with Nature’s ways.
But…
The truth is that in Nature, there is nothing created, but cycled and recycled. There is transformation and translocation, but no creation. At the minutest level, Nature is energy, and energy can be only transformed, neither created nor destroyed. That is why Nature is omniscient and ubiquitous.
Even our deviant behavior is natural — nature has all the dichotomies — the good, bad and the ugly. Nature, is therefore, us.
Yet Nature is much more. It is ‘so much more than a walk in the park
or a picnic down the river.’ There is nothing that we do, that is alien to nature. Our daily lives is nature.
And how we live them
in harmony
or fighting.Among green leaves
and concrete slabs.We can rip off the branches
and hurt our fellow-plant-beings.Or we can dance
concrete softer.
We are the chosen species, yet we are the errant ones. Every thought, word and action is either in harmony with Mother Nature or fighting against her. Our ‘creations’ are the misfits — like the concrete slabs.
Rampant urbanization has given rise to indiscriminate real estate and construction — represented by the concrete slabs, aided by deforestation and destruction of natural landscapes. In this, we fight against Nature.
The ‘green leaves’, represent our efforts to afforest and build back, systems that are resilient and rooted like the trees.
We can continue this path of rampant construction by ‘ripping of the branches and hurting our fellow plant-beings’. This is a clear call out on our choices, where energy hungry, growth hungry, consumerist human behavior is leading to callous and unscrupulous destruction of nature. The simple words here mean much more.
It is our choice to ‘dance the concrete softer’ — go slow on construction using concrete. Can we use regenerative materials? Do we need construction? Many more questions cross my mind while I write this.
Hear the music, my friend,
and dance, dance, dance.
There is still time, when Nature is breathing in harmony with us, despite our outlandish behavior. There is still music — the music of harmony with Nature. Let us listen to the tunes, and dance. Dance to the tune, the tune of harmony with Nature.
The Nature’s Warrior:
Desiree is a polymath. The span and variety of her roles shows the ability of a human, the world needs. She is a healer with words, designs and deeds. Her regenerative systemic solutions, along with her philosophy of abundanism, adding to her poetry… it is a lot in a human.
If you follow her on LinkedIn or Medium, you will realize that her words are impactful and are making a dent in the Universe — the universe of human minds, which have long lost its way.
I am a tad selfish when I will take the liberty to say that I am privileged to be her contemporaneous human and poet, to read her words and get healed and inspired.
My words are too little to describe her contributions, and I would say that the world is a much better place with this Nature’s Warrior.
~Ashok Subramanian
