Songs Of Earth

Wind whispers, secret stories told by mighty oaks

And daisies both, sagas spanning five hundred years

And tales of spring time, awakening of the fairy folk,

The magic of mountains, and the Virgin’s tears.

Rain hissing, lashing, battering windows and crops,

The farmer cursing where a month before he sang out,

Its inexorable persistence over time wearing down rocks,

Ceases, killing field and farm, man and beast with drought.

Thunder, the lambeg drums of cruel and mighty Gods,

Driving ancient folk to huddle back further in their cave,

Lightning’s partner, God’s tears falling like stair rods,

The wolf’s howl, Frankenstein turning in his grave.

Streams carry the joyous laughter of youngling fishes,

And the splish-splash of the oars of water boatmen,

Chuckling down mount and glen singing loud its wishes,

For the soft, touch and tickle of life-giving rain again.

Waterfalls roar the message of power, the river’s muscles

Flexing, proving its growth and will to go as it must

To the sea, with here a mighty roar, there a soft chuckle,

All life and death swept along with it in its wanderlust.

Ice cracks, singing its own cold, uncaring song, groans

As it shifts a little, no thought of the future and dissolving

Into its constituent parts.  Moving inexorably, stones

Rolling under the solid stream.  Sea comes and calving.

Sea crashes, cold, relentless against shore and cliff face,

Searching, probing for a fault to carelessly savage,

Sucking down the drowning man, interloper in this place,

To the mermaids arms, salt kisses and doomed marriage 

Volcanoes, Mother Earth belches loud, gulps and vomits,

Spews her guts venomously on the fleas infecting her surface,

Puking her anger at the irritation, death her only promise,

And then, her rage vented, calming after her catharsis.

Earthquakes shout of a new layout, architecture on such

A grand scale, rocks roaring, screaming as they rear up

And crash into pits, Mother Earth shouting out how much

She controls; as always poor Mother Nature the runner-up. 

Birds, dawn touching their chilled, fluffed up feathers,

Returning them to life’s marvels and joys.  The choir

Commences its praise, sings their song in any weather,

Sky their playground, flight and freedom the prime desire.

Beasts, they roar, they grunt, growl, bark, purr and howl,

Mimic, mock and make every sound that is conceivable

As they love, fight and eat, live and die cheek by jowl,

Their dire and foul treatment by human kind indefensible.

Whales, singing their songs, dolphins adding percussion,

Porpoises and walrus honking and grunting wild harmony,

The sea’s once joyous noise, now subject to sad destruction,

Prime ape, twisting songs of peace to screams of agony.

Humanity raises a cacophony, subjugates all creatures.

It rapes the Earth, and in a final deadly din and flame,

Purifies, removing from the planet, its worst feature,

Returning all to a disappointed God from whence they came.

And Gaia sighs, with pain and deep relief; and passing years

Bring forth once more the sounds of harmonious rebirth;

Elements, beasts, fish, fowl sing with her, hopeful, free of fear,

Mountains, seas and sky weave together the Songs of Earth.