She Wants It, Too
No one longs for consent, respect, and pleasure more than our Mother Earth.
She wants clear horizons, fresh air, the gently quiet atmosphere that she once knew, a very (though not so “very” to her) long time ago. She wants the rain to bathe her fields and mountains, to fill her springs and rivers.
She wants her oceans swelling and riotous, joyfully licking at the sky. She wants her fish and sea mammals gleeful in her embrace, unmolested by the detritus of human consumption. She wants these waters regarded as the mystery and art that they are — not as a depthless garbage can. She wants her whales enjoying yawning, lazy dives, her great white sharks quivering with ecstasy in blood-stained waters, her jellyfish dancing in electric motes.
She wants her waters to flow freely, creating their own paths as they once did. Fashioning canyons, designing mountains, sculpting boulders. She wants these waters clean and fresh and accessible to all the living beings she nurtures. She wants to choose what it animates — milkweed-dotted creek beds where the butterflies gather, stands of aspen that shake their leaves in the wind like happy, clapping hands, riverbanks that conceive sunny St. John’s wort, hemlock, and horsetail. Not domesticated lawns or corporate farms that plant patented seeds.
She wants her fecundity protected. Respected. Honored and even worshipped. No more poisons thrown into her soil. No more chemicals poured over her, contaminating her, stunting her power, choking her. She wants to choose what happens to her own body.
She wants her mountains approached and regarded with reverence, not the determination to conquer.
She wants her babies to thrive, protected and honored for the beauty that they bring to this world. She wants her wolves to howl, her lions to roar, her owls to hoot. She wants them to be seen as sisters and brothers, not commodities, not threats to economic ventures, not resources. She wants to stop weeping for her darling elephants lost to ivory poachers, for her wild coyotes shot and left by the side of the road by anxious ranchers, for her gentle Leatherback turtles killed for their eggs.
She wants her blood to run freely, unharvested, no longer pulled out in long, painful transfusions that too often spill across her waters, her land, drenching her creatures in the thick, sticky liquid that runs through her veins, drowning them in her own life force.
She wants so desperately to offer all that we need. She wants for us to harvest what she gives so freely: wind, water, light, and heat.
She wants to feel her tectonic plates shift in moments of ecstasy. She wants to let loose her lava, spilling it into the sky and along the land. She wants to rip across the land and sea with tornados and hurricanes, unleashing all her power with just one finger.
She wants to feel the sun on her body — she reaches for it with her mountains, her redwoods. She wants to feel the milky light of the moon on her bare haunches when she stretches out beneath the night sky. She wants the stars to speckle their patterns of light across her landscapes.
She wants to feel our feet galloping across her body, bare and damp. She wants to hold us in the cradle of her stones and waters and trees. She wants to protect us — despite our indifference — beneath her canopies.
She wants us to remember the sacred dance of breath that was designed so that we’d know one another intimately, as one body. Our breath becoming hers, and hers becoming ours. She wants us to know the names of her plants, to learn their language, to hear their voices.
She wants us to know her. To love her. To remember why she was once sacred to us.
She wants to be loved again, just like she was once, a very long time ago.
© Yael Wolfe 2020
