Dear Earth Mother

By Megan Shadden, City College Plymouth

Dear Earth Mother,


It is day 110 million that species homo sapiens has been alive

And I can’t help but wonder if our spaceship crash landed

Or if this was truly an atomically contrived divine plan

We’ve infested you with our ignorance and disease

Somewhere forgetting how to live harmoniously

Sharp buildings jut out like hungry jawbones

Keeping us snared inside

I’ve never felt so alone

Behind the doors of our cages

We comfort ourselves with hypnotic screens

Each one screams

“Consume

Consume

Consume”

And we do

Not thinking of the consequences for me or for you

But the factory fills the boxes

And the plane flies the packages

To the courier that gives us our thrill

Just for it to end up in landfill

After only a few weeks



You cry,

“I can’t breathe!

I can’t breathe!”

Carbon chokes your lungs

While we rip out another tree to harvest fossil fuels and give us more energy

We know you as a home to every creature great or small

Powerful wings spread from the mighty gull,

As it lets out a magnificent battle cry

Once an ocean hunter, now deemed rats of the sky

Compared to scurrying pests

Thieving and stealing

Searching desperately

But we must not forget human’s history

We pillaged the seas

Casting our vast nets so selfishly

And lined our shelves with cling filmed fish

In unforgivable quantities

These pests of the sky

Fly victim to greedy hands

That will do anything to deflect responsibility

We live our lives so separately

From you, Earth Mother

Yet our very particles are intrinsically made of each other

I fear that the damage is done

That we’ve met our fate

Is it too late?

From each blade of grass

To ivy armoured tree limb

To boundless sky above

And ancient depth of the sea

There is still a chance for Earth and me

If we remember our roots collectively

We must take only what we need

Of Earth Mother’s abundance

For she provides us with ample armfuls of sustenance

If we go back and live off of the land

Apart of nature’s divine plan

We can grow a brighter future

For us and Mother Nature

Earth Mother, you feel broken

This I know to be true

But all of me vows to love all of you

Because every breath I breathe,

Every molecule of me

Is part of you


Forever, faithfully, fervently yours,

MW