Earth

I see you and smell your good smell and have tried to make amends 
by treading softly on your breast.
It pains me to hear you protest.
It pains me even more to be helpless to help you assert yourself. 
What can I do? I cannot help you in a thousand years.
Before you turn your face away, look towards the plight I’m in 
and see for yourself that we are faced with the same ills.
Don’t say I betrayed you — I’ll hang myself. Leave me alone.
I press my ear between your thighs to hear the beat of your heart 
that tells me things I cannot help but hear.
About how you gave birth and life, breast-fed and nourished until 
you were spurned, then enslaved. I am listening, Earth.
You are my light and rattle your chains in my face.
I hear you even when I don’t want to listen.
I hear about the miles and miles of road across you and the tons
of garbage, among other installations and callousness.
It is a pitiful tale and my sympathy is greater than my gratitude.
You make no demands, but raise your voice to complain of sonic booms. 
They laid you bare and prayed to someone other than yourself and
what you stand for. How can they have forgotten?
I hear you scream as they pluck the good things inside you, purge 
you of purity and turn you over to suffocation.
But you are still pure and your heart beats as strongly as before.
It throbs through me about your fenced-in existence and the death 
of all you cherish to have by your side forever.
About your dearth of tears brought about by drought due to their 
consumption and greed.
About the rape you have to bear so regularly.
About the bid to halt the flow of your blood to stop your heart 
from beating messages in Morse about pollution.
Still it beats, telling me things. Keep quiet.
I can’t loft trash into orbit. I honestly can’t.
Don’t ask me to tear up roads and rip off rails and roll them
into the sea with the loads I push up the slopes to
help you draw your breath.
Don’t tell me all the things I know — I can’t stand it.
O Mother, stop the flow of your anguish from reaching my ears.
I cannot help you in a million years.