ABPA — The Australian Bush Poets Association Inc.

Extracted or Polluted or Extinct

© David Judge

Winner, 2024 Banjo Paterson Writing Awards, Contemporary Poetry, Orange, NSW.

When Paterson and Lawson wrote of places rugged and remote,
they had no sense of what the world would need,
to meet the challenges of how we focus on the here and now
and overcome the ravages of greed.

Those balladeers of yesteryear wrote verse and prose with no idea
of how the world they wrote of would withstand,
increasing degradation of and rampant exploitation of
the limited resources we demand.

We use the words of want and need and those in charge are all agreed
that economic growth is at the core,
of how we need to build and spend and want for nothing in the end
until there’s nothing left worth living for.

Our banks are keen to lend, lend, lend so we can go and spend, spend, spend
on ‘stuff’ we do not need and rarely use,
to live in high-rise built so fast with imports made that only last
until their imperfections make the news.

With population overflow where homeless have nowhere to go,
we cannot over-emphasize the strain
of how we always seem to take, not understanding what’s at stake
to lose those things that we won’t see again.

The Thylacine is here no more and lost forever well before
so many other species of our time,
for which we are no doubt to blame and we should hang our heads in shame
and recognise extinction as a crime.

To fell our forests is insane depriving wildlife of terrain
that is not ours to damage and destroy,
as if we have the lawful right to pillage and prolong the plight
of places we should nurture to enjoy.

The National Parks we set aside are where the ferals go to hide
to lead our bureaucrats a merry dance,
from camels, carp, wild dogs, and rats to foxes, pigs, cane toads, and cats,
our native species do not have a chance.

Our oceans reek of vile refuse resulting from our sad abuse
of what determines if we live or die
and if we don’t soon recognise the gravity of its demise,
we have no choice of where our futures lie.

It’s habitats we need to save allowing nature to behave
the way that evolution has decreed,
in balance with a human law which recognises less is more,
consuming nothing more than we all need.

Each day we get the constant news of rare and cute things born in zoos
which emphasizes how we see success,
not recognising what’s at stake, ignoring that our big mistake
is humanising species in distress.

We give them silly Christian names and watch them play our childhood games
as if they are performers on a stage
and feed them through black bars of steel ignoring how they really feel,
restricted to a life inside a cage.

The Murray Darling Basin laws are ineffective now because
we cannot mitigate against a drought,
when storage dams evaporate and irrigators fake the rate
of how much water they are pumping out.

That river system is unique and one of many that we seek
to save from more destruction and neglect,
which will ensure survival rates of ecosystems in all states
that we have failed to plaudit or protect.

To see the scope of human waste reflects our gluttony and taste
for mountains of the things we throw away,
the heights of which do not abate, ensuring that our final fate
will be the heavy price that we will pay.

The fashion trade still oozes sleaze with garments made from pulping trees
and chemicals that blatantly pollute,
the waterways and minds of those who congregate at fashion shows
where worship by the vain is absolute.

The miners dig and dredge and drill without regard for those that will
be victims of the consequences where,
the earth is brutalised and maimed and left to them to be reclaimed
amidst the raw destruction and despair.

We are a pox on planet Earth and overestimate our worth,
destroying habitats we can’t replace,
where other species struggle on until their numbers have all gone
to leave behind a lonesome human race.

There is no end to our excess and how the hedonists express
their pointless search for bigger, biggest, best,
with unashamed decadence and no regard for common sense,
where will the voices come from to protest?

Where is the will from those who lead, to understand the things we need
beyond the next electoral debate,
to think outside the mundane square and have the fortitude to dare
to make amends before it is too late.

It’s time for us to play a part and read the Statement from the Heart
which recognises how we can connect,
responding to that sovereign claim which means much more than just a name
to those who have a culture to protect.

We need a shift in paradigms in these uncertain war-torn times,
reflective of the need to be distinct,
to make the changes we all know will extricate the status quo:
Extracted or Polluted or Extinct.


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