I Apologise for the Human Race

The freedom space offers is vast and all encompassing, composed of galactic orange nebulas, nonsensical constellations and the ever enticing simple star. Our star, although considered to be enormous by humanity, is actually quite small in the greater scheme of things. Considering this, it’s a marvel we matter at all.

Twirling a yellow dandelion between my finger and thumb, I consult the questions that have assaulted my mind the past eighty-two years. Oh to be a conscious creature, one whose thoughts impact their surroundings and have the power to either create or destroy depictions of reality. Reality at this moment was fictional, an apocalypse sky blossomed with red coloured clouds and diluted sunlight, filtered through a light rain of ash that landed lightly atop bunches of blue and purple wildflowers. It was spring.

If this was the end, it was beautiful. Stunning was the only word I could think of to describe the situation, better to see the light than focus on the dark. Tendril fingers of flame reached into the sky, asking to be picked up and carried further by Brother wind, watched by Sister moon, aided by Father sun. Our sun, this precious, twirling star. It was a wonder he hadn’t acted until now, with wave after wave of dry, endless heat that stifled the cries of starlings, festering the flavour of passion fruits to be sour and deflated.

I’m unsure where to go from here, I don’t know really what more to say. Those two simple words I write over and over again, with my tongue on the back of my teeth, outlined by my fingers in space, pressed into muddy roads by my feet. I’m sorry.

Hear me when I say it, when I press my face to the dry red dirt and kiss your body over and over and over again. Hear it when I howl with the wolves, when I dive beneath the sea and swim with the flow of your blood. Know that with every piece of trash I collect from the brambles left unkept, I apologise.

Everything they had said was coming true. The bumblebees had disappeared and with them an assortment of floral and faunal species. Eco-systems, both big and small, were being wiped from existence. It was interesting from all perspectives, although I couldn’t help but understand that regardless of the increasingly quick change, it was all bound to happen sooner or later. The super continent cycle was as familiar to Earth as the four seasons, created by the ever subtly changing axis tilt of the planet. It was all incredible to have even existed in the first place, an indescribable miracle hurtling at the speed of light along the side of a star.

Our home.

And looking now, back on all that was said, my apology deepens to one of desperate despair and unrelenting sorrow. I ask for no personal forgiveness, all I’ve done I have done for you but it has and never will be, enough. I ask for nothing other than your ear.

A moment of your precious time Mother Earth, however long that may be, whatever scale or time warped, in my imagination twisted, reality you watch us all through please hear my plea and know that of all the billions of single minded souls, one cares, and one would like to apologise. In any way, shape, or form let it be known that an old woman wishes there was more she could have done, and that she has done all that she can do.

Having lived however many human days, I would like to imagine I have lived most of them in your name; with great curiosity and a grand sense of splendour. It’s a marvel, every time without fail, to watch the leaves turn from green to brown and then fall, to watch things wilt from big to small. I have watched all my life in delight at the delicate intricacies of soft green leaves and flower petals, the veins that weave like lightning along every brain, every eye, every underside and belly of any mushroom and their innumerable kind. To see the network of tree roots that wind through you Mama, collecting and connecting with rivers of melted snow running with Salmon over sparkling stones. It’s an indescribable feeling and thing to be able to see the interaction of atoms and intersecting grid locks of honey comb hexagons, all connected, all working with purpose and a lack of greed or unprecedented need. To witness the absolute majesty of a sunset.

On a molecular level you astound me, astonish and shock every system with glorious and fantastical cells, seen only through human creation I will admit, but existing all the same out of sight out of mind. That is the problem with my kind, they do not seem to care for what they do not personally see. If only we all saw you the way a poet writes. If only we described each and every day as imperfectly perfect and untouchable in our memory and minds, woke every morning with gratitude on our sun kissed lips and stretched and rolled from our beds to stand with the break of day and beam at any strands of wispy cloud winding through the sky. If only we would all marvel at our place in the world and the universe as a whole, questioning what we think we know to be true, asking why we are the way we are and who made us this way. IF someone aside from you made us at all. If we all saw what the best of us describe, I do believe we would be okay. If we all painted the colours of corals and admired central nautilus spirals, well, what a beautiful place the world would be.

I touch the flower behind my ear, picked prior from the ground with a light happy sigh before being placed atop my head like a crown. It slipped down of course, pushed by the wind to land in my lap where I squinted in joy at the pastel purple around the edges, smiled at the deep purple centre.

A personal tribute of my mine Mother Earth, would be a flower tucked behind my ear. I always ask before I would take one from a vine, I would always say thank you and bow my head in respect. The majority of my species I believe would not, as they see you as evil if not their equal and roll their eyes at the idea of basic respect. I consider you my elder, and I was taught to listen and learn with the utmost regard and mindful kindness in regards to your emotional ways. I cannot say the same for the rest.

Depraved, degenerate, call them what you will. Immoral and unholy, Humans are little sinful creatures that can not possibly be what this mysterious man the majority pray to, intended to create. Cynical at best, old age has done me no personal wonders yet I still find myself bowing at the base of your greatest trees, humbled by the expanse of sky and space impressed upon your shoulders that you lift with atmospheric palms to stop the threats of asphyxiation and death. I find it irrational and unimaginably selfish that we aim to leave you, take off in our space boats as if we were simply sailing, harrowing squalls amid the rising seas, our sailor on deck in the crows nest turning his eye away from the melting icebergs, the Great Garbage Patch. I’m sorry he does that, I’m sorry I do not scream myself hoarse at him to notice, that I do not yell louder at him to care. I have tried, yet he pretends not to notice, he chooses not to care.

I’m sorry for all that has been done to you, the oil you bleed from our relentless greedy stabs, a systemic infection that is pushed by pillaging hands into the heart of your lungs, drowning and poisoning your trees. I’m so very sorry for the plastic in your seas and the grit and glug corroding and clogging your once pristine arteries. Young ones and old, myself included, hold up hand painted cardboard boxes and scream and shout and demand, draining what was once thought to be an endless abundance of hopeful, change planting seeds. But it’s not enough. I know that, and now I don’t know what to do. My time has now become a reflection of how I spent it, all those long years with my hands in the soil, my eyes to the sky and shiny silver tears dripping down my cheeks as I realised the unshakeable truth; I alone was not the problem, and I alone was not the solution. It will take a revolution to rebuild you, and for that I apologise for the human race, as deep down in the pit of my stomach, I don’t believe they can do it. I am scared, I am weary and I am old.

I am afraid for your survival, so very afraid. My beautiful home, I apologise.

I’m sorry for the destruction and death of your creatures, the annihilation of precious ‘resources’, the rape of your body and raid of your life. I apologise for this massacre of land, the removal of mountain tops, if only they could be recovered. I beg you to please hear me when I cry out in anguish and press my hands above my chest to hold my heart from breaking with every sob of a creature chained up in pain awaiting a gruesome and grizzly end. If only I could make amends. If only I could set them all free. If only I could fly with the monarch butterflies and assure their safe migration from Mexico to California, soar for miles with the Albatros and their incredible wingspan, swim beside blue whales and protect them from harm, if only it was so easy. If I could I would and I say that with pride. I feel it in my chest, my body and in my breath. Hear my apology in my every reverberation of my heartbeat, as faint as it grows listen close and please understand I would do it all if I could, and I am so very sorry that I cannot. With no abundance of time at the hands and feet of the next generation, I leave what little time I have left in dedication to you, and allegiance to your protection. Time, what a funny thing. I thought I had so much left, never once questioned my mortality until recently and yet still you are the only one on my mind.

All the time I think of you, swirling through space without a rhyme or reason clear to my kind. I think of you often, your habits and ways, I wonder at your secrets and pray they stay that way. Best not to expose what would most likely be exploited. You must be so exhausted. To protect and give to us all all that we would ever need, only to be used and abused with disregard and ugly neglect. Our green accomodating tomb, our treasure-trove and midden, I’m so sorry. With every fibre of my being, hear me now.

‘Terrea mi cuerpo’ I murmured, reciting an old Spanish nursery rhyme I had learned many years ago and had never forgotten. The Earth is my body. ‘Agua mi sangre,’ I sang softly, watching the orange monster and writhing mass of encroaching flames in a sky and ridge reflected puddle. Water my blood. ‘Ali mi aliento, y fuego mi esperito’ air my breath, and fire my spirit.

‘muy lo siento’, I am so very sorry.