Four hundred years of humans passed

since collective wanton greed

shot our last small beaver kit -

extinguishing our useful life.

Your love of our soft pelts and meat,

and castoreum from anal glands

arrested vital damming work

that made the wetlands species loved.

We’ve watched you, men of Wallington

you Williams, Walters, Johns and Charles’ -

mastering what you thought yours

- the nature we’d called home.

Mistaking what is ours for yours

- dominance for dominion -

you lorded it o’er hill and moor,

rock, orchid and your fellow men.

We watched you extract and shoot

with confidence of wealth and class.

Always knowing best - of course -

ravaging our natural realm.

You maximised your own returns.

grasping with a tightening grip.

Like womenfolk, our wild side

was manicured and controlled.

Determinedly you drained the moors

killing bog and marshland plants

forcing water fast away,

miring folk downstream with floods.

Just as you laid down histories

you all grasped nature by the throat.

You shot at anything that moved

felling native trees and beasts.

Regardless of extinction’s threat

heaths burned to boost your bloody sport.

Pheasants and spruce stifled our moors

killing off diversity.

Your most odd farming ways persist.

You still out-pour that killing juice.

And eat produce laced with death

and even feed it to your bairns.

As wildfires burn and floods deluge

we see you gasp and turn your mind

toward our wisdom long since lost

to counter human arrogance.

You - Wallington - know better now

plantations-felled on hill and moor.

Re-wilding with our native trees

of holly, birch and mountain ash.

You heed the bans on burning hills,

fill upland drains to re-flood bogs

so wetlands thrive and rivers slow,

marsh returns. Juniper grows.

Though red squirrelling kin still decline

birds and beasts can freely come

and mountain hare, black grouse and lark

may once again co-habit here.

And now we’re back roaming your camp

beavering so busily.

We lodge ourselves in burrowed banks

kept safe from angry farming shots.

We see you spy on us for hope,

colouring us with Beatrix’s hues.

We wonder how she’d draw our slink,

if not extinct before her time.

We gnaw and munch on root and branch.

We fell trunks. Mudscape our bounds.

Our slinking mass makes mires and tarns.

These carbon sinks flood plains - not towns.

We form damming homes of trees.

We slow the flow of deluges,

so waters stay in upland realms

that dry out less in blistering heat.

We thrive in community,

living with our ‘other’ kin.

Daubenton’s bats and kingfishers

Bitterns, voles and willow tits.

We twist a wince within your cage

that fences our potential work.

Escaping your man-made bounds

we scout for mates to birth more kits.

We swagger back when caught down stream

without our tails between our legs.

We go again, against your rules

out-foxing you for nature’s sake.

We see you gasping at our deeds

and challenge you to wild your minds,

to breathe humility - not smoke,

relinquish wants and challenge needs.

Yet fair is fair - insight has grown.

But not enough to unlock bounds,

and let our natural ways resume

to dam the flood of human greed.

We forgave your forebears sin

of shooting our last kits for pelts.

We’ll beaver on to flood your doom

with hope that saves your skin.