The Natural World Poem by Peter Black

This human world is fixed with chains and locks.
Children are told with their arms and legs clasped,
'Do not think of what is not sold or bought.'
As they are led from closed box to hot box,
Where the inner light has grown faded, gone
Out of the mystic; we forgot the songs
That put dancing into innocent feet,
Around tribal fires and roasting meat;
Now we chant dirges to the greedy gods,
Loving captives of interest and clocks.

But out past the city and sprawling ways,
Of powdered bricks and electricity,
Beyond the dead lands where forests were stripped,
Down to roots for tinder, mulch and toothpicks,
There is pine tree in a field of green,
Where the grasses grow tall in unbleached sun,
And wild flowers and hillsides run:
Highways of color in a rainbow hue.
Untouched by mankind, nature does not know,

The human face and the human disdain
For living things in their right and proper place.
The birds do not know our clamorous throng.
Above those flowers, breeding butterflies,
Dance their love in a ballet of twists,
Bellow dragonflies that ride the highwinds;
And under the pine in a perfect shade,
There is no care for what money is made.
From the branches hang thousands of silk worms,
That twist a cloth for the natural world.