Pitiful Prematurely-Wasted Planet

Now that all these years have passed, I gaze once more upon your face

I see those things that I remembered so often in my foolish race

But still I wonder, how could age come so quickly to the land?

How could you have changed so much in the lifetime of just one man?

I see the lines upon your face and the soot within your tears

the damage from your gouged out hillsides is even worse than it appears

I gasp in disgust at the condition of that once fair, sweet meadow

I fear for myself looking at the waste and garbage from long ago

And I remember how your beauty beckoned me the closer that I drew

And how I now howl as what little remains still comes shining through

I shed a tear now and again as your dawn still nuzzles me as it used to do

I only wish I could have loved you as much but simply left you as I found you

Everywhere I see the struggle to tame, control and then, finally, to enjoy

But around me too, I miss that wild presence that just had to be destroyed

Your streams hold fish raised in tanks on pellets and dumped from trucks

The roads I once walked alone are full of men who seek only quick bucks

The sunsets have grown deeper with all our smog and smoke

The summers have grown longer and the winters are not as cold

Your trophy game have all been taken but we shoot them all, just in case

The spring rain you still bless us with is a thing of unappreciated grace

The uncalled for erosion of your hillsides into your creeks is just a little kiss

The shattering of your wise thick silence is surely nothing we should miss

As we slash your forests and silt your rivers we are showing you our love

So long as you support us will we continue, with the blessings from above

The scattering of our plastic litter is an offering to appease your spirit

Though we rip you with our bulldozers, you really need not fear it

The choking madness of our cities surely bonds us to you

Our agriculture and husbandry pervert the very work you do

The way we treat each other mirrors what we think you find fair

Our system values greedy self-interest as you valued the water and the air

We invented a merciful, beneficent god who blesses our daily destruction

And we bade that god command us to take dominion with our construction

After a long time in my short life I never thought you could change very much

But many of the things I thought would last, we turned to ash and such

The rate that we extinguish your precious life forms drains your very vigor

Your resources are severely strained by our awful population figures

Your waters now filled with toxic runoffs no longer flow without a care

We managed even to abuse the great wide oceans beyond our repair

How do your ancient senses relate to our blind and mindless noise?

Why is it that I know, it truly was much better before these foolish boys?

In your silent mercy you fully support our arrogant and ignorant folly

you grow old before your measured time amid our foolish caterwauling

As I gaze once more into your eyes still bright with curiosity and excitement

Though humbled and ashamed I still stand by and watch in wretched guilty silence

In our long histories, just moments in the vast time that you have known

To my astonishment I see we have only reaped and never, ever sown

Tell me, do you still have places that rekindle your fondest memories?

Do you long for the days before this mass rending became our legacy?

Your arms still reach out to embrace me in those same soft ways

Why does it seem now as if I visit you during your last hospice days?

Your perfume was truly exciting that time when we first kissed

Now it is laced with so many forms of our careless toxic mist

I remember your many coats of splendor made of trees and grass and flowers

Now grown threadbare with excavation, mining and dark, modern towers

there is a contradiction looking upon you now as you lay sleeping

Your present image draws a profound mixture of nausea and weeping

From all directions come reports of unending insults to your perfections

I realize with shame it must get worse with each of our generations

I wonder if your are mortally wounded or, perhaps, merely ill

we will never know if you die or recover, for very soon we all will be forever still