The Scourge of Excess

Drought, Wind, Fire and Flood, extreme
events, the bane of humankind's existence.
Taken singly, a huge impediment to the
orderly management of life upon this
Planet. In evil tandem, a frightful display
of nature's excessive pauses. Afflicting the
Globe in disparate areas of geographic
human settlement - impeding basic survival.

In the beginning, a persistent drought
presents to the consternation of farmers
upon whom the populace depends for their
daily bread. Then wind assembles its
formidable resources, drying growing things
further, turning forests into tinder. Dry,
combustible; winds gleefully picking up
valuable soil to scatter where it is not
required, and the land continues to parch.

Fire finds a ready source and hungrily laps
sap from thirst-struggling forests. The
blazes become all-enveloping in their
unstoppable voracious appetite, to consume
and to consume further, leaving acrid,
black smoking residue where once stood
proudly forested wilderness. Animals,
desperate to escape the charnel their home
has become, succumb. People flee for their
lives, abandoning hope along with possessions.

Rain begins its descent over the landscape
and becomes torrential, drenching, drowning,
threatening in its fearsome deluge, loosening
soil, clay and rock from mountainsides as
great mudslides and avalanches tumble to
copiously suffocate the land below, and to
block rivers' passage into lakes and oceans,
creating dams where none should be, and
massive floods ensue, engulfing all before them.

Waterways flushed to capacity flow over valleys,
fertile fields and farms and towns and villages,
sending inhabitants to flee to higher ground,
leaving homes and domestic animals deserted
to their fate; fend or perish. A catastrophic
disaster of epic proportions, each scenario
leaving nations aghast at the massive destruction,
and governments hopelessly unresponsive.

This is fierce Nature at her dominating crest,
reminding her creatures of the tenuous place
upon which they perch in her exalted dominion.
She grants us leave to exist and to manipulate
her resources, but this represents merely a
temporary accommodation until her tempestuous
nature again asserts her claim to final ownership
of our destiny and under us the very earth moves
as she prepares her ongoing strategies, details
of which are hers, restively, alone.