Most oft the face of mother nature seems soft and quite serene The birds and flowers together paint such a peaceful scene Green trees they tower majestic into cloudless summer skies We thrill to the swift magic dancing of pretty dragonflies Mackerel dart and plankton shimmer in silver deep-blue seas Our slick Walt Disney movies love to paint such scenes as these But beneath such majestic beauty some hidden secrets hide The dynamic spinning wheel of nature has a darker side It's found with ruthless logic in every complex food chain Where the sick, the slow and weak feel constant mortal pain They're hunted, chased, devoured by each bigger faster beast So, all these happy little creatures just become another's feast The vibrant air we breathe each day is full of tiny motes Small spores and yeasts and nasty beasts, they all go down our throats Our skins just crawl with dirt and bugs we cannot wipe away And why they do not make us sick it's very hard to say Our bodies have learned a trick or two over many thousand years No wonder why those who forget this are plagued by silly fears It's the magic of black carbon that fuels this crazy chain of life That jostles daily to and fro in a frantic equilibrium of strife Our plants and sea-green plankton collect it every day sun shines It makes the flowers, the age-old oaks and canny Scottish pines The vital gas that runs this mighty show is stolen from our air But at just one part in ten thousand, this stuff is very very rare Now nature's web is complex with massive overload If every walnut seed should grow the world would soon explode In fifty years, each tree might drop about one million nuts But only one of these must grow, there are no ifs or buts The rest will simply rot away or serve as “super food” If you don't see how this logic works, you're a very stupid dude We modern techno-humans, we want to have control With science and computers to take a commanding role We think we can manage climate and rule the world of plants We support white-coated wizards with ever bigger grants We control the `'official`' narrative with smart electronic kit We manage news and censor views to make the story fit But deep inside this make-believe there lies a hidden fear The answers to our cosmic quest are maybe not so clear The complex ordered chemistry of all our human brains Will never truly master nature's many interlinked domains As nature's fated creatures, we must carry the torch of life Tackle the gordian knots of fate, try to cut them with a knife We've tried so very many times to master all life's tricks What dangerous things we do today with nature's building bricks Splicing genes may seem like fun for fools who mess with DNA But toying with the codes of life is a very risky game to play The mysteries of unintended consequences are an ever-present threat Once Pandora's box is opened nobody knows what you will get!
