The Roar of Nature's Spirit

                  The Roar of Nature’s Spirit

Through winding roads and rich, luminous pathways

That pave our sight through bright drops of sun,

The forests of India stand tall past mud and clay,

Archaic, lush, and dense, with countless stories unsung.

Roars, screeches, chirps, and the voices of winds

Echo and set the forests into a dream that clasps.

And yet our minds, both virtually and truly, overflow

With every kind of sound and image that grasps.

Sounds and vivid images, and hazes of green

Blur our senses in a shifting screen.

Yet, there comes a throb in its very heart and soul,

A shudder in its spirit that pounds in our ears—

Of felines, of canines, of the youngest of foals and moles,

Gliding along tree trunks and caves where the bear sleeps near.

Saws whirr on, driven by tired, uncaring hands,

Making branches jitter and tremble in spasms.

Axes fill the forest with bellows of protest for hours,

From trees and beasts whose homes are now chasms.

These hollows squeeze the lives from roots and soil,

Trunks once shaped for shade and human rest.

India weeps with Ganga and Godavari, under smoke and smog,

While barren sites lie choked, denied their forested best.

Will our world ever heal its lands with living water,

And wake the forests back to breathing green?

Will green once more command this vast, wide earth?

If I were you, I would ask for what’s truly deserved—

For gentle beings whose homes should be their own,

Somehow, somewhere, as it always should have been.

~Sahana Raghuraman