Poem – WHERE NONE HAS GONE BEFORE (By Ray Gallucci)

 

WHERE NONE HAS GONE BEFORE

 

Though we arrived just yesterday

In geologic time,

Appears we’ve had too much to say,

And none of it sublime.

 

Repeated cometary blasts,

The forces needed to

Turn species into fossils past

When time was overdue.

 

Like plague of locusts, we can scourge

Wherever we alight.

Primeval ecosystems purge.

We’re quite a potent blight!

 

Once Madagascar was an island

Rife with forests green,

Till immigrants who sailed from Thailand

“Slashed and burned” it clean.

 

The Bay of Chesapeake once held

More crabs than you could count.

But lately have you even shelled

Your minimal amount?

 

Now planet’s started fighting back

As we probe deeper yet.

And so when jungles we attack,

New epidemics get.

 

Diseases once confined to species

We dared not disturb,

Have, by our folly, been unleashed

As “just deserts” deserved.

 

Consider AIDS, E. Bola, SARS.

Know what awaits us next?

Perhaps some mutant phage from Mars

Or Herpes strain Complex?

 

However, what has history taught us

Time and time again?

That what we’ve learned amounts to naught.

We’ll blunder now as then.

 

 

(Published in DANA LITERARY SOCIETY ONLINE JOURNAL, September 2005)

 

[su_gallucci]