In Spite Of Man Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

In Spite of Man

(1)
Planet Earth was born
Five billion years ago.
Life appeared on earth
Within a few million years.

Fresh rain water collected
Forming large oceans
There evolved trillions of
Fresh water life forms.

When, within a few millennia,
the water turned salty
those adapted, survived
And many new species evolved.

Man is just two million years old
But he has interfered with the nature
And caused damages to the green cover
The polar ice cap and the ozone shield.

Earth is the only place known yet
With its climate, where man can live
But he has made the atmosphere toxic
And made it less conducive for life.

(2)
Three quarters of all plants and animals
Including dinosaurs were dead and extinct
Sixty six million years ago
Leaving Earth a vast graveyard,

When a massive asteroid or comet
Impacted with planet earth
Triggering huge eruptions from its deep
Covering its atmosphere with heavy dust,

Stopping sunshine from reaching earth
Causing an ‘impact winter' centuries long
Halting photosynthesis, snapping the food- chain
But, Life in many new forms erupted on Earth.


(3)
Many species of plants and animals
Have become extinct for good
As nature's checks and balances foiled
Or, maybe, because nature decided otherwise.

Nature outlived the mighty dinos
And planet earth survived.
What man vitiate may not be remade
But Earth would survive as home for all.

Man may die due to the changes to nature
Man-induced, but Earth survives, for sure.
With man may die millions of other species
Of animals, insects, fish, plants and vines.

New species will spring up
That can live and multiply
In the new conditions like
Little water and high temperature;

That can live without oxygen
Like anaerobic bacteria.
A new food-chain may evolve
And it will be a new earth.

Mammoths of the ice age died
But elephants came into existence.
So shall man die someday
But new species may take his place.


(4)
The pride of place once occupied by man,
May have a new incumbent with better brains;
May be with a brain as ill-equipped as
The homosapiens or with no brain at all!

Whether this happens or not,
Nature will survive full of Life
So shall Mother Earth,
Without man, in spite of him.

True, Earth will die some day
When Sun dies, as the scientists say
But not because of what man did
Though he may have hastened it.

There might be many stars like Suns
And many more planets like earth
Where life might be prevalent
Or could translocate from Earth.

So Nature lives on and Life continues
At some part of the universe.