Mother, Mother

Mother, my heart burns for you. I’m sorry, Mother, I truly am.

On Life and Earth

How rarely it is we kick shoes free,

Rid our socks and feel land with our feet...

How rarely it is we see the trees

Providing a shrine to human peace...

You are what you eat, this may be true

If it is, then for them too,

For those who have died are one with the earth

Among those sprawling branches dispersed—

And one day I too will join in the ground

Squeeze my way into those leaves,

Stretching onward to the sun

Through wind that whistles symphonies—

The song of life and human nature

Sings between our emerald glades,

In light and love a memory,

Preserved eternal, ever saved…

How rarely is it we feel our grace,

The comfort in cycles instead of the race,

Our life and death, in day and night

Beginning and ending our colorful fight—

This mystery mother gives us strength:

Energy and soul and heart,

And we still beg, steal, complain

As if it was ours from the start.

We isolate: in cities, in homes,

With shoes and cars

We desecrate,

Such is the world we came to know--

We're tearing beauty from natural grace.

We rob the earth of life in shame,

We speed along our coming midnight

Humans in our foolish ways,

We use and use and lastly exhaust.

Lest we could realize that we are not boss,

Lest we lastly make a change,

See we are naught without Her breast,

Without the trees at her behest

Which, even while we chop and saw them,

Clean the air we breathe…

These trees, full of ancestral energy,

Full of life and love and peace—

This myriad of ancient beings

Watching over our frivolous games.

Pondering on our mistakes and

Hoping that we change our ways,

I weep-- they live so we can prosper

And still we treat them shamefully.

How we return to communion with Earth?

I do not know the answer.

Maybe, though, it lies in nature,

Kicking free our shoes and cars—

Breaking from society,

Live closer to Her bleeding heart.

For we can’t see in cities and homes,

We can’t see what we’ve always known:

As humans we have one place to stay

But we, the vines, have overgrown.

To strangle the breath of her lasting grace,

A virus we became to Her,

A plague which stole her peaceful soldiers

Trees, killed in war with their own,

A civil war which we must shoulder.

Warned we are by science, and yet

Industry’s sickening face grows colder,

Strips the land of marvelous frills,

She provides, we do her harm—

To this day it gives me chills…

In reverence to our Mother, Earth

I am but a child with outstretched arms.

Forgive me mother, for we have failed.

With honest hearts we did you harm,

And it is we who pay the price,

Trapped in the city as some kind of jail,

It’s only right that our kind must suffer

For all we’ve done to flaw and fail

Your beauty and love, we scarred your face

For little more than something vain.

If only I could hold your face,

Tell you sorry, wipe the tears,

As mine will fall into your fingers

I hope you feel I am humbled here—

By power my brothers stole from you,

By guilt they still refuse to own

Mother, Mother, please forgive me.

Human love is warped and cold.

For our hypocrite destructive race,

For your soul, I bow my head in shame...