TE23 Double Feature

Gaia Warnings

Philip Burton

The Prize Between the night and the village sodium glow creeps unwarranted along the breastworks of a ditch. A chaffinch nest, pierced, dislodged, lies on the desolate brim of the road betrayed by the gross modern rage for chain-saw management of hedgerows to ease the Grand Guigno rampage of the car. The villagers arrive for Easter, swerve to avoid the tumulus nest. A polecat moon paws-back the cloud’s edge, looks in. One fledgling left, on tiptoes, cries in silence. No replies. The cuckoo village quietens as it squats. Day by day, carefully sewn moss, roots, grass unwind, buffeted by cars which shuttle past. A figure sweeps the parking lots. Today’s The Best Kept Village Prize.

The Eco-Neutral Revolution There’s not a single jot of wood in a computer, nor in a computer stool. There’s no deforestation in manufacturing a ‘Play Station.’ Compact discs are chic and need no mahogany or teak to hide in. Keyboards don’t use ‘boards’ at all. You don’t need to mow down pines to make a modem. When you download a document no tree is touched by the event. I’ll go further, maybe into Thurber country: in all the Internet’s electronic gossamer there’s not one interaction with a tree, not one connection with chain-saw-economics or slash-and-burn, or land reform or forestry, or jungle husbandry. 109

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