In the quiet nights of winter
The air sighs with an icy chill
The skies close their deep gray eyes to block out the sun
Waiting to let snowy tears spill
Mother earth cuts the hours of sunlight short,
Letting the darkness drag on
Letting the cold shiver into all life below
Letting herself languish in her despair.
Her body is being destroyed
Her trees are bulldozed to the ground
Smog infiltrates the lungs of her animals
Plastic clogs her oceans,
Making the fish sputter and choke
She falls ever deeper into a pit of sadness
Unable to claw her way out
Unable to free herself
From the hopelessness that blankets the once golden skies.
Will this drought of warmth go on forever?
Mother earth is mourning what once was,
She hides her face from the sun
Inner turmoil seeps from her brain
In a violent gale that shakes leaves off their branches
And sends animals scurrying to shelter.
She scares off the band of bird twills and grasshopper songs that once welcomed the morning
She wilts the colorful plants that once populated the world she lovingly curated
As she thunders through the abused planes of earth,
Her heart constricts with pain
Lightning cracks through the sky,
All her creations can hear her roaring sobs,
Even the ones that are ruining the world,
Ruining her,
Exploiting her love
In her rage, the skies grow ever darker
Increasingly populated with rolling black clouds.
She sends another bolt of lightning through the sky,
But in her anguish,
She loses control, letting it slip loose and hit the ground
Illuminating a bare twig that curls away in fear
Mother earth gasps
She almost struck this manifestation of her soul.
Her body is being destroyed from the outside,
And in her rage she nearly destroyed herself from within
She gazes down at the little twig,
Remembering when she was young
When she first realized she was capable of creating beauty
She loved the earth, loved herself,
So much that she never stopped creating
Until she saw her world being violated
Yet, through all the pain, the twig has never dwindled, it stands tall
Waiting to grow
Reminding mother earth that not all parts of her have been touched by evil,
And these parts she can still protect
She lets the storm rumble away,
Lets the gray fizzle out of the sky and allows the sun to peek through
Lets the lightning end, lets the chill lift from the air
She cradles the twig in her hands,
Drawing it close to her heart
Swearing to always protect it, to protect herself
Weeks pass,
She is scared to let the twig grow,
She fears it will be cut down and taken from her
Abused like her other creations
But she remembers her promise, and she allows the twig to bud
Into a stunning rose
To let the petals fall open to reveal shades of deep red
To reveal the beauty she had hidden
Her trees continue to be chopped down,
But she nourishes the soil so new ones can grow
Plastic still clogs her oceans,
But she washes it ashore to protect the fish from choking
She lets rain fall where there is drought
Halting her harsh winds and perilous tempests
Tears still fall from her eyes when she remembers
What she has lost
But these tears are no longer icy,
They are warm and soft,
Nourishing the rose as it grows taller
Turning its face to the shining sky as as it glows in the sun mother earth has given it
Out of the swirl of petals and green leaves a voice calls out to
Mother earth as if saying
thank you for protecting me, thank you for loving me when no one else would
