What a selfish child, she thought
Leeching the poor tree dry
Less than what she had been before.

She herself stripped of her jewels
Made into extreme miniatures for her children’s fingers and ears
The mossy fur ripped from her flesh
Her screams the crunch and creak as they felled her trees.

They give her no pause between the spasms of pain
An endless labor with no birth to show
No relief and her sweat has filled oceans.

The fires licking over her parched skin are a joyous pain
She writhes, reveling in the heat.
And now it is her children who scream and sob
Begging the man who cradles them in his palm to restrain her.

But he won’t
For they are hers while mortal
And he will not touch them
Until their ghosts have shrugged from their shells.

Once the sight of their broken bodies
would have caused her tears to pour forth
Drowning their tiny lungs and swelling the number held by him.
But now she is a mother who turns her face from her squalling infants
Cries falling onto calloused ears.

She learned from the many named man
How to be at peace with their deaths
And found from him comfort
With his mouth sewn shut, his eyes only for those he holds
His ears filled with the empty silence of their space.
And even though this last sanctuary has become contaminated
Still she stirs the soup of air rocketing her little ones around her.

Her ignorant children cause her agony
But what young do not?

Some even pray to her
Working to feed off her in other ways
And though they are only a drop in the bucket of her pain
She cannot deny she loves them.

So long has she watched them live and die
Broke down their empty  bodies and
seen them rejoin their creator to weep
when faced with what they have done to her their mother.

A pity the dead cannot speak to the living.
But she quiets them
Shows her disembodied children
The wonders she still holds
Smothered, smudged and distorted.

Again they sob thinking she means punishment
In showing them her diminished beauty but it is not so.
She beckons them to look and understand
No matter the cancer growth of their chemicals
that poison her body
There is no permanent death for she will consume any and all
Even her own brood to continue on.

Her children may strip her of everything
As willingly as Shel’s tree gave herself away
But it is she who will remain long after their bodies
Have grown frail and decayed
For she is Mother Earth.