found at patheos.com - artist unknown
I once was pure,
but then you came in millions.
I watched you rip and tear
at my bounty,
ravage my pristine hillsides,
frack my innards,
melt the polar icecaps,
and reconfigure the sky.
Your nuclear plants leak poison;
your underground "tests" destroy;
you fill all bodies of water with effluent;
your love of beef and oil
is filling the air you breathe
with noxious fumes;
and your love of money
is so desperate
that you would gasp your last
in the grasping of it.
Now, if I shed tears,
will they be acid rain?
And if I smile a golden sun at you
will it burn up the desert?
If my unsettled spirit
unleashes a mighty wind,
and covers your shores with mighty tides,
can you see how you have provoked
the winds?
how you have flooded the shores?
You have tied my hands
so that I dare not even weep.
Burdened me with grief profound
for the fateful promises
I must keep.
But still I advise,
as hopefully
as only a mother can:
mend your ways,
or I must return
to how I was
when I began.
Posted for Kerry's cool prompt at Real Toads: to write in the first person of a god or goddess, as if she is contemplating life in the present era. Something I often think about. I chose Gaia, the Goddess or personification of Earth in Greek mythology.
