I’ve spent a couple of days walking around my small town. I’ve had opportunity to explore a bit and move at a pace which has allowed me to notice more. What has struck me is the amount of roadside trash that accumulates especially over the winter and the lack of sidewalks. Granted our town is putting more into sidewalks, but it is clear that the world we live in was not made for walking.

You’d think this world was made for cars
That we weren’t made for walking far
Just rolling o’er asphalt and tar.
This world was made for cars.

You’d think this world was made for roads
The arteries which pump the loads
Of stuff whose weight each mile erodes.
This world was made for roads.

You’d think this world was made for trash—
Styrofoam cups, cigar butts and ash,
Or emptied bottles of malt and mash.
This world was made for trash.

You’d think the roads were made for trucks
The big-boxed beast which run amuck,
Run me down for some company’s bucks.
The roads were made for trucks.

You’d think the world was made for stores
The brothels of consumption’s whores
Who sell to johns who always want more.
The world was made for stores.

Once this world was full of trees
Her meadow’s flowers kissed by bees
Where sunlit leaves danced in the breeze.
This world was full of trees.

But now in her forest full of birds
Comes a whispered threat a frightful word,
The howl of a wolf the peace disturbs
Her forest full of birds.

The wild’s beauty is now dis-graced
Is tooth and claw, an unkind face
Where what one needs is kindness, grace.
Beauty is now dis-graced.

Once, kind it was, this world of life,
But death came in and with his knife
Cut with sickness and stabbed with strife;
Once kind, this world of life.

This world, God made for you and me
But from Him in cars to stores we flee
Fast along ways that we call free.

© Randall Edwards 2019.