Evolutionary Playtime
(An Alternative Commentary for ‘the Green Planet’)

Life evolves in response
To the call
To come out and play
In the great openness
Where opportunity abounds
For imagination to run riot
Dancing in moonlight and sunbeams
Bathing in freshwater and sea
Tunnelling through earth
Flying in air
Fired up by free spirit
Called soulfully from within
Those dynamic envelopes
That give living form
The chance to thrive
Not merely survive
In myriad expressions
Fed,
Not pressured,
From outside
But variably constrained
Yearning and expanding from inside
Into flowing movement
Like a river that both shapes
And is shaped by landscape
In reciprocal relationship
Creating and following
Paths of least resistance
Between source and outlet
Neither opposing nor subservient
To its neighbourhood
Not in military confrontation
Nor seeking victory
But gathering in, conserving, exploring and redistributing
With ergonomic proficiency
In tune with circumstances
.
An evolutionary lesson
That human abstraction
Has yet to learn
As it surveys the scene
With objective detachment
And jumps to concluding
That life is a battlefield
Projecting its own enmity
On those it views through a camera lens
Then complains bitterly
About its own species’ ignorance
In wrecking its habitat
For the sake of monopoly
Not sharing with care
In the consonance and dissonance
That together co-create
This vibrant world