Ode to a Toad!

Ode to a Humble Toad

Oh my, my…
There’s a little tear in my eye.
You ask why?
Believe me, I could cry
For all those creatures for whom
We’ve forgotten how to care
Whether a whale or even a snail;
It’s our lack of compassion
That we have perfected in our fashion

A callowness to which we aspire
To believe that everything is for hire
A lack of respect for that which
We have been blessed,
We treat it like all the rest
God’s creatures receive short shrift
Surely, they won’t be missed!

And the environment has
Nothing to do with me…
So what if there goes another tree
No one cares if there’s lots of rain;
Or that little of it reaches the dusty plain

We don’t care if tides get higher
As long as there’s another buyer
We don’t care if the air turns to night
We don’t care about infrared light
We don’t care if the land gets hot
As long as that buyer is hot to trot…

We don’t care if islands sink
As long as it doesn’t make us think.
We don’t care about frogs that die
We’ll never ask the reasons “why?”

Trouble is we can’t associate
With things we can’t appreciate.
And never will we consider it odd
That money has become our God.
Or that we’ve forgotten all our friends
In order to pursue our separate ends

It all seems quite normal, indeed
To be motivated by things like greed.
So plunder it as best we can
And leave the moralizing to another man.

And don’t worry about this planet
That we all seem to take for granted
For, surely, there will be another day
Even if it’s 100 light years away….