Dear Earth

Here I am this morning, like every morning, fingers poised over the keys, cup of tea on my left. Out my window: a very gentle rain, more like mist, my plants standing up tall, drinking gratefully. Behind them,  old growth, some tall and straight, others bent and leaning, a buffer.

The village is busier now as the first pandemic tourists arrive in a confusion of masks / no masks, distancing / no distancing, making us all nervous. I have trouble leaving my house for very long; the courage of travelling amazes me. Is it courage or denial? Or entitlement?

In the bigger world, capitalism continues gobbling everything, while bears are so hungry they climb to the tops of trees to steal eggs from eagles' nests; polar bears drown swimming miles in search of food; cougars wander through the village, hungry, lacking habitat; glaciers melt; wildfires burn; humans die from a virus that attacks the blood vessels and inner organs, unlike anything we've ever seen, and terrifying.

In the midst of climate crisis, a pandemic, and a general unraveling, racist police are killing people, in daylight, on camera, unashamed, and citizens across the world are rising up. At last, we rise, after three and a half years of racist rhetoric which emboldened the dark hearts to come out from under their rocks.

Here I am, dear earth. As always, my comfort is in you, my gratitude is for you, your beauty is always here, and generous, you offer your cycles and seasons no matter how badly humans are mistreating you. You humble me. I feel guilt and grief at your distress that we have caused. I weep for the animals, for us and for the mess we've made.

"Mother Earth has enough for our need,"
the medicine man says,
"but not our greed."

Mea culpa.