Respect

Treat your mother with respect,
we are taught as children small,
and yet we ravage and destroy
the mother of us all.

Mother Earth is waiting
for the lesson to be learned,
yet we have mowed her forests down,
and the remaining ones are burned.

Treat your mother with respect,
though we have fracked and dug for oil,
till summer makes all creatures feel
like pots close to the boil.

Treat your mother with respect,
yet we don't hear her distressed cries,
and now her storms and floods
say we were profligate, not wise.

There is much work we need to do,
reparation at whatever cost.
Our own survival depends on her,
or we will be forever lost.