CANCER

CANCER
( Talking about its scourge )

(1)
Up from all fours, erect, mobile,
Scared by cold ice and scorching heat,
Thunder and lightning, rain and snow,
Struggling for power, attacking for
Dominance, man verses beast and man.
Gathered tribal, he rapes and plunders,
To feed their wants, demand their needs.
Profits from World riches plundered
For personal gain by a scoundrel few
Who elevate themselves disguised
As corporations claimed immune from
Universal Law meant to protects life.

(2)
Unquenched greed drives obscene profits
Wrung from degradation of Earth's environment
Despoiling life giving, life sustaining elements :
Waters become polluted, friable soils spent,
Our air choked with unspeakable contaminants,
Great forests withdraw under constant assault,
Ice caps melt away, vast seas and oceans rise,
Shore lines sound retreat, islands washed over are lost.
Man verses diseases as cancers populate vast clusters
Fanned by chemical pollution obscuring Universal Law.

(3)
Brash ignorance prevails but harsh power assails
To pervade the Holiness of our good common sense.
The overabundant Earth is a living, breathing sphere.
It is our bodies that are grim, beaker less, test tubes,
Over analyzed, shocked at the findings, disease rampant.
For hope The College Of Doctors seek garish chemicals,
Their practice is to probe and probe with answers few.
More chemicals, for profit not cure, masking men's deeds.
The Human Dilemma: Not if, but when? Not how, but why?
We cry, eyes red and teared, for answers, and hear,"I don't know."

(4)
From nonbeing, into being, finally back to nonbeing.
Since our genes have passed through living as stardust
Many times before, they will recycle again and again
Before the Earth crisps into dust and rejoins as elements.
Matter is never lost just changed in its composition.
Energy as a force just shifts from one to another form.
We live within our consciousness, in Universe Time, a moment.

(5)
The shock of inhumanity where wild greed prostitutes Man's ego,
Exposes a weakness in him, that acting for self, choses either flight or fight.
Wealth, worshiped as God, finds money is only the Devil's elixir.
Power is the true Deity, power to lord over a crumbling planet,
Power to pollute water ways, power to deforest, power to expand deserts,
Power to despoil land, sea, and air; and power to deny the public true health care.

(6)
What is the true cost of health, cost of life?
Through introspection we will act with intelligence
To find sound reason for answers acceptable,
But with emotion, we act in knee-jerk ways.
Always challenge wants and needs,
The Big Picture is always necessary.
Strong of will are challenged to lead,
Leading requires a great strength of
Character found only in a very few,
You, my daughter, Sherri, are one of those few.

Ronald C. Downie, (Dad)
Upon Steve Kurtz's Death, 12/8/2009
(At A Pivotal Time for his wife Sherri and family)