Saving Places - I Thought I Saw

We had a homework this week, it was in our English class. The task was to read a poem in our textbook, and then think about what we read, and elaborate it. I will start with writing down the poem. I don't own anything of this, it's all taken from the book we use in our English class, called Searching 10.

I thought I saw a fertile plain

Growing a crop of golden corn.

I thought I saw the sea again but -

It's probably just the light of dawn.

I thought I saw the proud elephant

Patrolling by the lake.

I thought I saw the boxing kangaroo but -

It must have been a mistake.

I thought I saw the mighty buffalo,

Stampeding through the forest.

I thought I saw a modest honey bee but -

It could not have been - I promise.

I thought I saw the arrogant kingfisher,

Flashing his red-orange chest.

I thought I saw a bounding hare but -

Maybe my eyes just need a rest.

All these things -

They could not be

They all died out because of me.      Hannah Tobin (10)

I think this is a good poem. What I think it is about, is that we humans are too greedy. We think way too much about ourselves, without thinking about the ones around us. The animals, the insects, the birds, the fish.. They matter, too. The author wrote that "they all died because of me". What I think she means about that, is that we destroy the animal's habitats, because we want more space and goods to ourselves. A lot of animals die because we cut trees from the forests, spill oil in the seas, and use their dead bodies on our own. We pollute the landscape and nature around us, killing both plants and animals.

This relates to Arne Næss's Deep Ecology, wich I wrote about in a previous post. We kill more animals than we need, just because we are so greedy. I think the author of the poem and Arne Næss have something in common;

They both want to open people's eyes, to make people understand that we have to think about other creatures than just ourselves. I think that the poem's author and Arne Næss have similar opinions about this. 

What the author of this poem did to bring out her message, was that she first brought out beauty in the landscape and in the animals. She said that "I thought I saw", and then a lot of animals or nature. This got me to actually think about the pretty world we live in, wich we normally just take for granted. Then, the author contraticted what she just wrote, with kind of taking the beauty away, saying that it don't exist anymore. That made me sad, and it also made me realize that everything doesn't last forever. All this beauty of the world may just dissappear, and that may be our fault. The human nature's fault. Because of our greed, creatures and plants die.

Take action, don't be too greedy! Think about the nature and the animals! ♥

I used no other sources than the Searching-book, and  my blog entry about Arne Næss.

This is where I found the photos.