Small gods

I never get any thanks. I used to, back when people used to wear animal skins and horns on their heads and they knew that every forest, every pool, every hill had its own god, but these days - nothing. It's the big guys that get all the limelight - you know the ones I'm talking about - but they're the ones who do the least.

Now me, I actually touch people's lives. I'm the one who keeps this river flowing, so that the crops get water and the wheel on the mill turns and the fish can breed and the silt gets carried down to the sea. Now, before you say anything I know it's just a small river, but to the farms and villages that sit on its banks it's the whole world.

We're still here, we small gods. All of us. It doesn't matter that no-one believes in us any more, we're still the ones who bring those daffodils in springtime and keep that forest from dying and chase the salmon upstream to mate. And we always will. Just you remember that.