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They were wrong. All of them. The deniers and the politicians, all were wrong. The scientists, denigrated for their audacity to speak truth to power, were far too late with their warnings.

Our demise had long been written in our carbon footprints.

Viewed from space, the earth is a living, breathing entity suspended in an endless sea of night, inhaling and exhaling with a blue and green set of lungs.

Is the earth sentient? Perhaps. It has defended itself from debris flung from the cosmos. When volcanoes spewed molten lava creating dense clouds that blocked the sun, it held its breath while all other living things perished. And we humans? We are the most malignant of cancers. The earth defends itself from us and rightly so.

Malice or retribution is not the earth’s intention. The earth is not evil or benign. It just is. It survives. Will we?

What mysteries await

in hidden places

the past revealed

in their traces

of what had been

but is no more

yet, we are drawn, inexorably

to explore

To dwell here in the bright

of verdant green and sunlight

of sweet scents that delight

I would lay me down

listening to the sound

of nature, all around

she sings to my soul

her music, lyrics of old

a treasure, far better than gold

She fills the sink till the bubbles rise

She washes the dishes and she sighs

Just like her dreams, the bubbles pop

and disappear,

 till she is left

with only her fears

Baby is pulling at her knee

She picks him up, and twirls him, weeeeee…

The radio is playing its musical fantasy

Vibrating the air

And in the kitchen, there

She dances with baby on her hip

And because she loves

The laughter on his sweet face

She makes herself content to wait

For the dreams she knows she needs 

To make her life complete

And so, she dances with baby on her hip

They twirl around and around

Speaking words that make no sound

They were ten and twelve, scrawny arms and gamboling legs. Best friends on this late spring day. The rains had come and gone, washing away the remnants of winter’s debris. They race along the ridge, chasing winds that whisper secrets only they can hear.  They follow those whispers deep into the woods, lured from an often trod path.

For who can resist the wind?

“Hey,” calls out the eldest, his ginger hair curling from beneath his baseball cap, “What”s this?”

The youngest, to prove his mettle, leaps over the narrowest part of the crevice, “Aw, probably just a cave.”

“It looks old. And deep,” Ginger says, his interest piqued, though he stands back, eyes narrowed.

The younger one, his hair blowing stick straight, black as a raven’s wing, says,” Could be Indian bones inside,” his brown eyes wide with challenge.

The gauntlet thrown,  Ginger puffs out his chest, though his heart kicks up, “Let’s go to the edge of the cave, just to see?”

Raven grins, “You go first, I’ll stick close.”

Ginger lowers his legs over the crevice, than slips down until his feet touch spongy earth. Shale from the outcropping falls in behind him. He takes a step and then another. The decline drops suddenly, sharply.  “Oh, oh,” Ginger cries out. The Oh’s echo up and up. Shale and stone slide in behind him, clattering and echoing.

“Hey, you okay?” Black has scurried back from the crevice, legs and arms careening in a crab-like fashion. He stands on hard earth, pacing, pacing.

Black calls out again and again; his voice, only his voice echoes back. They’d been warned not to leave the path. He had only followed.

The sun falls behind the trees; threads of purple trace their tops. Black picks his way through the shadows; the menacing trees.

The wind chases him, pushing him sideways, slapping at his head, twisting his black hair.

And the echoes, insistent, the echoes are inside his head.