Nature poetry written prior to the twentieth century always described nature as a place of beauty and contentment. Today the view of nature is entirely different. We live in a world where man destroys more than he builds, where it is more acceptable to throw down rather than pick up. Our once pristine world is quickly disappearing. I look for the beauty in nature and I am fortunate to live in a time when nature abounds with brilliance and rebounds with tenacity. I also look for the ugliness that we have scoured into the earth as wounds inflected by the end of a whip; demonstrating little regard for the future or projecting how nature will be visited in the future. My hope for the future, I pray, I am mistaken.