Who will mourn the ‘Age of Man’
when the epoch of Adam is done?
His dream of dominion has cursed the earth,
our sweat has stained the ground.
We staggered into the Anthropocene
where sickness shadows the lands
and death depletes the seas.
When cycles of life are spinning askew
Gaia cries out for her creatures
to tend the afflictions of Earth.
Listen – set aside your books to hear –
she speaks her truths in feral tongues.
In the howling crown of a wildfire,
in the crumbling face of a glacier,
in the cracking of ice on the Arctic Sea
a summons comes to humankind.
Go make an ark of living earth
woven from grasslands, rivers, and trees,
ten thousand arks across the globe,
refugia fit for Gaia.
Make an ark of the boreal forest,
an ark of the chaparral.
Set aside the high desert,
keep the tundra intact.
Consider each reef a cathedral
and every swamp a sanctuary.
Let lawns revert to meadows
and plant a trillion trees
for a fever flushes the face of Gaia,
her time of trials has come.
Within this age an Eden awaits.
In your hands, the seed.
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| Image of Lighthouse, Ribbon Reefs, Great Barrier Reef, by Richard Ling <wikipedia@rling.com> |
