Short Term Gains Experimental Form Poem by ivor or ivor.e hogg

A great grey/green expanse of mud.
Covered twice daily by the flood
when the high tide comes flowing in.
Where does land end and sea begin?

Adapted to their habitat
the denizens live happily.

They recognise no boundary.
For they are free to come and go
between the salt marsh and the sea.
They know all that they need to know.

Adapted to their habitat
the denizens live happily.

Here they can live quite easily
safe from most land based predators
protected by the friendly sea.
The wading birds parade in force.

Adapted to their habitat
the denizens live happily.

To men a bleak unfriendly place.
To wading birds a paradise
providing them with a safe base
which guarantees their food supplies.

Adapted to their habitat
the denizens live happily.

Until men choose to interfere
and build dykes to hold back the sea.
The mud flats slowly disappear
The denizens are forced to flee.

For men adapt their habitat
so they can live more comfortably.

Though nature wins eventually
she will regain that which men claim
as theirs by waiting patiently.
She knows that she will win the game.

Though men adapt their habitat
it’s only temporarily.

The works of man though built to last
are not immune to nature’s laws.
They’re undermined and overcast
by years that slowly pass of course.

Nature restores the habitat
back to the way it used to be.

The birds return to their domain
as if they’d never been away
What man once held the birds regain
as Mother Nature gets her way.

Adapted to their habitat
the denizens live happily.

22-Feb-09
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