Art by Shirley McDaniels
“How can we co-exist?
If you can’t respect…
Respect this
My home
Your Forest, my home
You can’t expect me to keep wandering
Never to be with my peoples
Just keep wandering alone
You think it’s wonderful
that you may have found my nest
Not a scientific find,
it’s the place I stop, the place I rest
I keep going further in and further in
To stay out if your species ever expanding way
But you just keep coming and coming at me
Every. Single. Day.
My guttural call out
Telling you how scared and stressed I am,
to just please keep away
But you’re oblivious
So you knock and knock
And you keep coming anyway
So co-exit? I don’t think so
You want it all, the greed, your ego
Would that you could go your own way
and that I could go mine
But the engine keeps coming
Cutting through the forest,
like you’re chopping out a mine
The hum of that never ending engine
grinding and grinding
Taking it all In your human way
The way of mankind, yes, taking it all
Don’t leave nothing behind
And force me and mine out of safety,
out of hiding…”
Sasysquatchgirl 