Challenging Nature

At one time -- as in the proverbial 
'once upon a time', there was a certain
predictability of life. You could hope
and you could aspire but seldom did
beyond what your forbears anticipated.
The very rhythm of life was one of
lived expectations in synchronization
with nature and her elements. We're
free of that anchor now, so removed
from nature we hardly note its presence
for we've manipulated it as we tore
into a technological horizon people
back then would view, head spinning.
Just as nature became expendable over
time everything now falls into that
category and our entitlements have
risen far beyond what even we in our
early days might have imagined. Of
course nature is critically involved but not 
invoked; using her resources we have
industrialized and technologized the
world well beyond her simple blueprint
of survival. And in the process left
our own blueprint sprawling all over
the globe that is our home, the oceans
overrun with discards we've scattered
on the land, and the land reserved
for our imaginative creations geared
to expansive tastes which disentitle
other occupants squeezing them out of
their native habitats. Pity, that, but
after all the most intelligent, creative
life form on the planet does have the
final say, not? Right, not according to
nature's disposition and her proclivity
to allow those powerful elements of
her reign to react to the new self-rule
world of humankind, leaving us now
in a suspense of witnessing extremes of
yet another kind, inimical to ourselves.