I sit hidden in the shade. The light breeze teases me, reminding me of cooler days. Green leaves dance overhead, creating brilliant, ever changing, patterns of shadows on the sand. Flies lazily buzz from here to there, landing on every surface in between. Occasionally a bird passes by, not caring to share where it’s going or where it’s been. I envy the freedom of flight; it requires no explanation of destination. Today, the sun is my slave, drying my clean clothes without ever being paid, but the strength of its presence has me bound to this spot in the shade. Time passes slowly without the tick of a clock. The rhythmic crash of the waves continues ceaselessly, playing the role of nature’s heartbeat. Crash… Crash… Crash… as I sit here, quietly listening, I close my eyes, wrapped up in its glory, I know that nature loves me more that I could ever possibly love it back. Nature presents me with ruby red apples and sweet delicate bananas. It offers me a cool place to enjoy my day while offering freshly photosynthesized oxygen. Nature has provided me with everything I could possibly need or desire and yet my people, my species, have betrayed the hand that gives. We have poisoned nature, cut into its delicate embodiment and stolen everything it as to offer. We’ve raped the purity and beauty that is nature’s identity. We have exploited and abused the resources it offers and we have filled its fresh, free air with so many toxins that in some cities, we’ve suffocated not only nature, but also ourselves.
Just beyond the shoreline, only a short distance into the blues from where I sit is a second surf. Small waves rhythmically swell and break over a dead coral reef, like the throbbing pulse of a bloody human wound. What few tropical fish linger among the debris of disaster have lost their glorious shining colors. Their once glimmering yellow and red stripes have faded to the same shade of ashen grey as the dead coral. Our pollutions have made nature sick, cutting holes into its protective ozone, intensifying the sun while also chocking the atmosphere giving our global climate a fever. Just like human brain cells begin to die with intense long lasting fevers, coral reefs and other fragile pieces of nature will also die.
Here I sit hiding from the truth of the destruction my species has caused, gazing out over the ocean, listening to nature’s heartbeat, admiring the melancholy blues of my unconditional lover. Only something as purely innocent as nature can remain so breathtakingly beautiful and peacefully tranquil after years of humanity’s greedy assault. Nature’s heart beats steadily onward, while the blue horizon stretches into the distance, and the leaves overhead continue to dance with the simple joys of life that we have not yet taken from them.
