I am here – will I be there?
Will there be someone for me to care?
There is today, and the morrow,
Will it be there? Or gone somewhere!

Day follows night,
Was Darwin right?
Is Natural Selection
Our species’ plight?

What is right?
Is it might?
Do you see a tunnel?
Do you see light?

Dinosaurs gone,
Tigers going,
The human race,
A different face

Imagine…
A sparrow versus us?
Rocket versus bus?
What’s there on the moon?

Why end the journey on Earth so soon?
Is coexistence
Mere exhortation?
Me today, you tomorrow,
Is it all rotation?

Who has won?
And who lost?
Has the race even begun?
Does it matter how you run?

Does it matter to me?
Or only to history,
That man today
May be history on the way?

Do we really care
Who is around?
Does it matter
If mammals are no longer found?

The humble sparrow,
Without a morrow,
An enormous loss –
Wouldn’t it be a dreadful sorrow?

Going, going, gone…
Victims of man’s depredations,
That little bird
May soon never be heard.

Is man the villain?
Is knowledge destruction?
Do the simple simply find
The happiness of the innocent mind?

Material progress and GDP –
Do you have time for a cup of tea?
Do you even remember
Something called a family?

Is there a way out of this?
Is there really anything called bliss?
Do we just walk into the sunset
And believe nothing’s amiss?

"Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay,
Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away,"
Will this refrain for ever last?
Do I have a link with the past –
Or the future?
I wonder.

"From ‘Old Black Joe’ by Stephen Foster, recorded by Paul Robeson in the 1930s."

(The author is a prolific poet who has over 30 poetry books to his credit. He can be reached at ashoksawhny06@gmail.com/ www.ashoksawhny.com)