Drought, Fire, Flood, Famine

Manifestations all, of primordial elements in
evidence of the dire vulnerability of humankind.
We, at a comfortable and comforting remove
are witness to the persistent spectre of wind-parched
lands where crops fail. To ferocious wildfires consuming
great forests, to typhoons and huge windstorms
bringing persistent flooding, moving helpless
indigent populations to drift miserably toward survival
suffering starvation, thirst, endemic disease.

As for us, nicely ensconced in an urban landscape
of an advanced nation, the inclemency of weather
extremes becomes a fascinating spectator opportunity
of the power and the supreme majesty of Nature,
impervious to human design. Interventions
anxiously powerless yet frantically determined;
sloughed away indifferently by Earth-shuddering
quakes of a destructive magnitude scientists
emulate and governments belligerently warehouse.

Of raging tornadoes, cataclysmic tsunamis,
wildly unapproachable firestorms blackening
the Earth, then finally extinguished by relentless
monsoons, drowning all that lie beneath the
darkly threatening bowl of the hidden sun's sky.

For us, a brief pause in the order of our
unremarkable days of ongoing routine, now and
again interrupted by reminders of a remorseless
Nature. The same sun that heats our summer
atmosphere, withholding rain, creates drought
and mass starvation. The rains that considerately
moisten our crops inundate subsistence farms
on another continent, and create a great,
morbidly fleeing mass of desperate humanity.

Ours the pleasures of a vast open sky, the
consummate grace of a warming sun, cooling
breezes and forest fires consuming resources
reinvigorating our boreal forests. We experience
eye-opening earth movements whose effect may
impact wall-hung pictures to a slant; elsewhere,
helpless populations are buried in crumbled
ruins, suffocated in mountain mudslides.

We look on in empathetic dismay, pity welling
from deep within, thankful for our destiny's
escape from the rude ravages and everpresent
dangers haunting far-off land masses. And we
respond to charitable appeals from humanitarian
organizations, clucking with placid satisfaction
as our government, representing the wishes of
a complacent population, proffers official aid.

Then deplore the graft-ridden corruptness of
those nature-assaulted countries ruled by
dictators, theocracies, brutal totalitarians busily
exploiting their own, and pocketing the avails of
international generosity. Indignant introspection
concluded, we get on with our purposeful lives.