Dear Humans.. (a Gen-Z poem)

Nature expresses in colour, in bloom, in roars and chirps, in gushes and gurgles of water, and even through human thought and imagination. We all have our languages of expression. As humans, we share the script written across our species, even if varying in languages. How does the human language come to share the stories of nature?

Dear humans,

You assault her every second of every day,

Not caring about how or what she feels,

Choking her with smoke and gas till she turns grey,

Standing there, doing nothing and watching as she wastes away.

She acted as a mother all her life to you,

Took the trash, the tantrums you threw at her,

And this is how you repay her? Polluting her body and blood too,

It’s definitely not something new.

She provided you with all you needed to live,

Soil as shelter and fruits as food,

She gave you all, but you just lie and crib,

Oblivious to all she has accepted being intoxicated with.

She was happy, content before you exploited her,

Before all the vehicles, factories and toxic air,

You’re poisoning the very streams she used to nurture

You. Just cutting down trees, limbs for leather.

She sheds oceans of clear sky-blue tears,

But you turn even those into pits of plastic,

And when she erupts, stopping those smirking faces, those amused leers,

You bring her nature down in front of your peers.

But in recent years, she’s been healing slowly,

Carbon emissions remain the same but you have changed,

Cleaning oceans and creating sanctuaries,

Going back to your roots, planting more than a million trees!

You made this happen by getting along, coming together,

Helping not only nature but those who were important,

You united, giving her love when she needed it more than ever,

The whole human species, you (reading this) and the others.

Burgeoning bushes danced in the wind courtesy of you,

Trees tallying up again as they were re-planted,

But rising water, rising temperature levels need to be reduced too,

We still need to turn the Earth’s flooding tears from grey to blue.

This written piece is a submission made by Mishti Kewalramani for the Nature-writing workshop as part of the Season 1 of Gen-Z Solvers Interactive.

Through the workshop conducted by Pankaj Singh, a writer and the co-founder of Faraway Originals, the participants were guided through the many ways of attending to nature, reflecting on experiences and weaving them into our shared human language, channeling nature in our words though stories, poems, riddles and essays.

If you would like to write a piece and submit to us, write to info@worldview.global