The How Of Green
How Green Was My Valley – that film still haunts
Me down through the years, captures deepest wants;
A favorite of mother’s (of Welsh descent),
Men singing “Cwm Rhondda” with feeling, sent –Us into a place of the Spirit deep;
The past as the present, through scenes we’d greet;
The cause of emotion? That nasty Co.
Which skimped on mine safety – when asked, said, “So?”But deeper, as sources of coal would shift,
The lives of the miners were scarcely missed;
The shifting resource-base on England’s shore,
’Tis thus around world as we mine for ore.Extraction of resource, as Geddes said,
Is basis of work, from which culture’s fed;
So how does one profit from work these days,
When most of extraction’s machined in ways –Which do not require that men get involved?
So schemes middle layer has not been solved
Out here on the Prairie with agra-biz –
Extraction machines are where action is.I think, “Peanut Butter”, how it was found –
Farm-workers developed it in the ground;
But then chemist worked – found a hundred ways,
To utilize peanuts as crop which pays.So, how to add value to crops today?
For crops are resources which prairies lay
Before us, material – grain to trees,
To animals, fish, birds, and honeybees.I think that’s the focus for “how of green” –
To harness perceivers, and in between,
Encouragers, chasers of info, stats,
Imaginative thinkers – and work with that.For culture will form of its own accord,
But cannot be healthy or move toward
A level of wealth economically,
If work’s middle layer there cannot be.I hunch there are answers if we’d just seek
Beyond local borders for clues, and peak
At how all the others reach out today,
To shift crops extracted to goods that pay.Thanks Lord for this.
navigation