Awakened

From a deep slumber

Stepping outside the shelter–

How long have I slept?

Days, months, years, decades, or centuries?

And has the world changed?

I remember–

Ponds, streams, and wild woods

Nightingale chirping, leaves rustling

Oceans, rainforests, and coral reefs

One fished and swam and roamed the land free

They had been –

Cordoned off, trespassed, drained,

Cut down, paved over,

And built up.

Where have my old friends gone?

Lost in this manic world –

Devoured by desire

Bodies found in

Mountains of piling waste

Fishes – swimming in toxic soup

Even love becomes transactional

Bottled and sold

In the form of buy one get one free

Rivers dying

Glaciers too

When it rains, it rains acid

Gaze at the sun

shrouded by

dark smoke—

Sky falling

Under the weight of

emissions

What tragic wounds

done by the species

who learnt to spilt atoms

When will the river flow again?

When will the planet breath again?

When will we learn to love the world again?

Exhausted, I lay down

And let the shape of the mountains become me, 

And the forests turn into my skin

I dream of

The roots of trees growing

on civilization in ruins

The towering skyscraper crumbles

Large-scale infrastructures

Lost beneath the leaves and rhizomes

The wilderness returns

The rivers dance around the floodplain

To nourish the wetlands and forests

The spirits of the animals return,

dancing in the night,

Surrounded by the halo of moonlight

Caterpillars, songbirds, and the Bodhi trees

Celebrating the symphony between

bodies, biomes, and biosphere

And the homo sapiens

living with tapir, raccoons, monkeys, and jaguars

brothers and sisters of the world

Singing the harmony of the oikos

One planet

One community