In my dreams,
I saw a grove;
Farm animals walked around in a drove.
Birds fluttered and chirped;
To me, it was strange,
For these animals seemed unusually free.
The sky seemed eternally blue,
The blades of grass a vivid hue -
As I lay to rest beneath a tree,
I heard an enchanting voice,
A chorus of sentience vibrating in harmony.

Given the choice
To sit there
Or walk towards this mystical source,
This musical, human recourse,
A cry for help perhaps, sounding like a tune of despair,
I felt moved.

So, for what felt like days,
I walked.
As the enchanting voice got clearer,
I approached the figure of a woman.
This sonorous presence
Heard my feet crunch on a bed of leaves;
Her body was coated in this essence,
Life itself
Seemed to flow out of her robes.

As soon as she turned to look at me,
A slack-jawed mortal, in disbelief,
I found myself flooded with relief
When she stopped singing,
And said:
“Welcome home, son.”

I finally understood
This grove that smelled like pine and wood
Was home to someone ethereal.
“Mother?”
I asked, the anticipation and the confusion
Being too much.

“I am not the Mother
Who brought you to Earth.
I am Mother Earth, your home and life-giver.
I am the air that you breathe
The earth that you walk upon
The water that you drink
And the fire that you misuse.”

Upon this stately declaration,
I felt this manifestation
Of shame and sadness.
“What ails you, my child?”
She gently asked,
Sensing my emotions.
Steadying myself, I said:
“For years, I’ve held these notions
That as humans,
We should be guardians of all,
Both the great and the small,
Creating life and mourning death
Not wasting a single breath
Until our children
Inherit a world that is better
Fixed by solutions that were deemed the most clever.

Instead, I failed you;
We all did.
Instead of respecting you,
We abused you.
Taking you for granted,
Our plans we mercilessly supplanted.
To our species
You were a conquest
Another addition to the dominion.
I am sorry,
Forgive me.”

Her immortal hands
Reached out to hold mine;
A kaleidoscopic ecstasy of visions
Gripped my very soul,
Suddenly, in tune with life as a whole.
As I felt this blissful connection,
This divine intervention
Of the infinite briefly meeting the finite,
She said:

**“Son,
Don’t let your apology weigh on your heart.
It isn’t Mother Earth you should worry about;
It’s your future that is in doubt,
Not mine.
When the rivers run dry,
When the air becomes sickly,
When the earth is scorched
And fire its master,
When you are all destroying each other,
I will survive, you will not.
I will find a way to thrive
As your cities crumble and rot.”