Don't Take Her For Granted

Is the Earth reborn each year?

In many ways, it certainly feels that way.

We witness the ground coming alive, burgeoning underfoot.

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While the trees sprout new growth overhead,

Animals give birth in abundance during this turning of the wheel.

Yet they are not new, these creatures of the Earth.

Nor is the soil which nourishes the seeds and bulbs anew.

Mother Earth has been spinning since long before you or I set foot upon her.

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After a long winter's rest, She is revitalized with the dawning of the vernal cycle.

Welcoming the new furry and feathered inhabitants.

They join us in the neverending circle.

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Gaia blesses us all with her bounty no matter the season

Yet we stomp, build, decimate, and destroy her finite resources.

Our only reason is unending greed.

No one knows when this became society's creed.

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No excuse valid enough for the destruction we have wrought.

If you look closely, you'll see how worn she has become.

She shudders in discomfort and frustration,

Urging humankind to heed her warnings

To coexist harmoniously upon her surface,

To respect her.

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We ignore the quaking beneath us,

And as her tears overflow, tsunamis form.

We fail to hear her pleas,

So absorbed in our white-noise laden world

That we're disconnected from all that our ancestors once revered.

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She kicks up speeding whirlwinds,

Still, we do not see her distress in the whipping winds.

She signals her anguish, the awareness that She will not be able to continue to sustain us.

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Yet the politicians groan and tell us to ignore this hippie refrain.

They want their oil and fracking operations to always remain,

Oh, they're always the same.

Profit is the priority, trumping humanity.

As if it were a game.

A gamble.

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They don't care about the destruction of some Earthly dame,

They refuse to acknowledge She's the source from whence we all came.

Turning a blind eye to the dire future ahead.

Careless of the outcome of such a wager as theirs.

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They count their millions,

Ignoring the fact that the damage they've wrought is destroying Her infinite cycles.

Now ever-shrinking, ever slowing,

They'll portray that they are all-knowing.

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Soon we'll be left with a flooded, radiated orb that can no longer sustain.

When that time comes, not even their billions will allow them to remain.

What purpose does currency serve if there is no potable water to drink? Clean air to breathe?

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You see, while we witness a layer of Mother Earth's renewal each spring,

This does not signal that she will allow us to survive if we continue to inflict such pain upon Her, and one another.

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We must learn to tread more lightly,

More gently, upon our home

Or soon, She will cease to be all that we have known.

. . .

This poem was originally published on Medium.

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