The Cause

It began in a narrow green valley.
At least that is the first impression one had,
but the valley was also tall,
brown, and grey.
From the valley floor,
where the stream edged
even half a meter deeper,
sloped grassy banks.
At the top of the slope,
raging out of the grass,
were perpendicular walls,
on both sides,
rising nine hundred meters
to a majestic height
of three thousand.
There it began,
and then… unnoticed,
unknown to the world.
The grass,
and the slate brown walls,
were not the only splendour.
Pygmy Firs clung to the tiniest ledge.
Goats clambered with ease
on the frightening precipice.
Golden flowers sprinkled colour in the green,
and white ones too.
The stream whispered downhill and sparkled,
like a lover’s eyes.
The air was crisp and clean.
But then the sky, deep blue,
began to worry,
about some dark, forbidding future.
Yet the sun still stood its ground,
as yellow as the flowers,
it refused to give way.
A peregrine darted along the wall,
just above the grass.
Then it began…
The sun finally gave in.
The blue, still deep,
was a tiny patch, and then no more.
The golden disc was gone.
The browns were deeper.
The grass much greener.
And the sky was black.
It rained.
Then came the deluge.
Ferocious vertical rain.
It was grand.
It was wonderful.
How Mother feeds the earth.
It sounded like a hundred avalanches,
It rolled and stammered,
over the peaks.
And the valley was black,
and then white –
and blue,
as lightning searched for the ground.
Within an hour it was gone – the storm.
But the seed was sewn.
The damage, done.
For as the sun peeped out
and glistened on the new, clean stones,
life began to reappear.
A goat came out from his refuge,
and one limb slipped
on a wet and shiny stone.
Her three other limbs held her steady,
but it was too late,
the first stone had been set in motion.
Myriad rock-falls
had thundered down this wall
through the epochs,
since time began.
Many were horrendous,
many were murderous,
But this one stone was merely enough
to set one other larger rock
on its way.
And down it rolled, this cannon ball.
No bigger than a football
it bounced three or four times,
off the impervious rock face of the wall,
till it fell on the grassy slope below,
and bounced once again
until a mountain ash held it at bay.
Bruised, and bewildered,
the ash shook itself,
back into its sovereign state.
But the damage was done.
Several tears of clinging raindrops
fled from the tree
as the rock struck –
as it crashed into the trunk.
Not any of these heavenly tears were guilty.
Not even the one, the only one,
that splashed off a rock
and dived into the stream.
An atom of pure water,
that merged into the flow of the stream.
Now one with the flow,
that went miles down to the sea.
Now one with the current,
yet still an individual drop…
one heavenly tear.
The atom of water;
pure;
innocent;
joined the flow,
and slid down the valley floor
with the rest of the stream.
Like a young child on a slide at the fair.
Innocent,
and pure.
But the damage was done.
This molecule of water,
merged into the big one,
yet remained an individual.
It rolled down the hills
in to the lower lands below.
And as it swam,
Its inevitable journey to the sea,
It experienced far more
than on the leaf of the tree.
It saw, without seeing,
The beauty of the vale
as it fell to the lowland floor.
It sprung over waterfall,
Eddied round currents until it broke orbit,
into the main stream.
It saw the nature of Nature,
change,
as it rolled down,
slower now,
towards the flatlands close to the sea.
It saw nature change into man’s world.
Slowly but surely,
it passed the first house,
a holiday home,
at the foot of the mountains.
Then on it went –
this twenty four carat drop of rain,
on and on.
It passed more houses,
many trees,
a village.
Then through forest and farm.
It was still pure.
Through parks and wharves ran the river,
and our little diamond of rain went on,
relentlessly,
unimpeded,
and pure.
The first town,
and,
because the river was now old and slow,
it sluggishly crawled through real estate,
passing boys fishing with their Dads.
Now pleasure boats,
campsites,
jetties and parks.
Still on its way to the sea.
The little tear passed another town…
Bigger,
dirtier.
Not so open and free.
Yet nothing impeded our little crystal.
And nothing could stop
what had long since begun.
As the river twisted and turned
the little diamond was ushered
into this eddy and that.
In circles…
rolling under the surface,
and back on top –
in the white spray again.
But the river was older,
slower.
It carried many more diamonds of rain.
The drop from the mountain ash
had forgotten
that it had fallen from the sky,
that a boulder shook it off the tree,
and sent it on this journey to the sea.
Forgotten is not true,
because the experience was in her,
in the sub-conscience
of a gentle drop from heaven.
Then the time came –
its time came,
the innocence was gone.
Though this atom of water was not guilty
her innocence was gone.
It was not her fault.
But the river,
now deep and proud,
took another turn.
And as our atom turned the next bend,
and eddied into a slow bay,
she was hit,
and could do nothing to help,
as the factory puked out its poison.
Toxins that escape
from marketing processes,
from greed,
corruption,
and business.
Poisons that run away,
in shame,
from the capitalistic urge
to make a quick penny,
regardless of risk.
It was too late,
the damage was done.
And although she still drifted,
towards the sea,
she was dead.
But her life came just through luck,
it was just a coincidence,
and she could not help her crime.
Some miles downstream was a kindergarten home,
on the river.
Little Jimmy played down on the banks,
way down,
in the mud,
where a small inlet collected from a bend.
And it was just then,
as our jewel from heaven,
now dead,
rolled by.
Jimmy jumped into the flow,
and swallowed the water
that he had been told was pure.
The stream lived on,
but Jimmy died.
The damage had been done.

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