A Letter From Mother Earth

Mother Earth

 

All the riches you have stolen may be won in vain.

As you exploit my waterways and open every vein,

surely you can hear me crying out in pain?

When it comes to my riches, each madman wants a piece

at the cost of reason, willing to break the peace.

Will there be no ending? Will the warlords never cease?

As you grow one more spare tire around your spreading waist,

the spoils build up around you: the garbage and the waste.

How much plastic carnage will serve to suit your taste?

As you fill me full of chemicals, I become more weak.

Yet still you spray and pillage, hour by day by week.

The death of soil that nourishes can’t be what you seek!

Fluorocarbons, Roundup, radiation, lead––

all the earth’s blind children just follow where they’re led.

Swallowing all the poisons, devouring what they’re fed.

All the bleating sheep, the entire driven herd

do their best to overlook all the things they’ve heard—

every threat of doomsday, every warning word.

The cyclones swirl above you. The fires burn me bare.

How many floods and blizzards will your children bear?

Why don’t you heed the warnings? Don’t you even care?

When it comes to what you’re leaving to your son and heir,

there may be no more water and there may be no more air.

Does this ever bother you? Do you even care?

If every son and daughter voiced their pleas aloud

and questioned all these foolish sins their fathers have allowed,

would they bend their heads in grief? Can they be shamed and cowed?

If they beg and bargain, if they plead and pray,

will parents listen to the ones who’ve been their prey,

or will they keep on throwing their children’s lives away?

 

Judy Dykstra-Brown

El Ojo del Lago - Home Page

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