loving, through knowing every seed and star is love. That in time I will hold you as you hold me. That we will know the end of isolation and the beckoning of the reality of interdependence. That this is balance which is wisdom, look at the route the river takes. The branches leaning into the light.
I give you thanks. For the dew, for the sound of leaves, for the way water moves light, for birdsong, for the deserts, for hunger. For the cup of desire.
I have yet to learn that looking after myself begins with loving you, that we are husband and wife, that I sleep in your arms and drink your milk.
And now growing older you show me the symmetry of leaves, how death takes hold and how deep your scent is sweet in spring.
Peter Owen Jones
This week all the trees in my street are blossoming
And the world turns around again.
But we are eleven years, six months and counting
To hold on to what we have.
Tilly Lunken
But the Greatest of These Is Love
It’s finally happening. We’re finally talking about climate change. It’s messy, but it’s happening. To be honest, we don’t really have the language, and that’s largely because we don’t know how to feel about it.
For decades, the dominant narrative has been that we should feel guilt. Then, there’s the dual narrative that calls for hope. Others have called for fear, or panic. I myself am on the record calling for anger.
But I don’t always feel angry, to tell the truth. In fact, sometimes I’m hopeful, sometimes I’m scared. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed, and sometimes I’m downright stubborn. (My mama would tell you that’s pretty much all the time.)
That’s because none of those emotions really get to the heart of what I truly feel. None of them are big enough. If I’m honest with myself, what I truly feel is … love.
Hear me out.
I don’t mean any simple, sappy kind of love. I don’t mean anything cute or tame. I mean living, breathing, heart-beating love. Wild love. This love is not a noun, she is an action verb. She can shoot stars into the sky. She can spark a movement. She can sustain a revolution.
I love this beautiful, mysterious, complicated planet we get to call home. The planet who had the audacity to burst with life, from her boreal crown to her icy toes at the South Pole. I love her caves and her valleys and her rivers and her oceans. I love the majesty of larger-than-life elephants and whales and rhinos and lions. I love the elegance and enigma of all the different kinds of bats – even the ones that eat other bats! I love the unapologetic sass of butterflies and hummingbirds and coral reefs and the tear-jerking aroma of flowers that bloom below the equator.
I love that night-time symphony on steamy southern nights when the frogs croak and the crickets sing and the owls hunt. I love the taste of watermelon and blackberries in the summer – the way that they ooze down the side of my face when they’ve reached perfect ripeness. I love the delicate feel of honeysuckle petals and the warm, grainy earth and dewy grass on my bare feet.
I love sitting on my mama’s back porch in Mississippi to watch ‘God do his work’ in the form of late summer thunderstorms underneath a thick blanket of humidity. I love the late summer haze when all the colours come to life and seem to throb.
And I love my mama. I love my family. I love my niece and nephew and I love that it doesn’t matter that their parents are actually my cousins and not my siblings. I love my Aunt Joyce’s laugh and my cousin Candice’s freckles and my Aunt Karen’s voice.
I love – dare I say it? – myself. And some days it’s easier to do that than others. Sometimes it feels impossible, but it’s a work in progress and I’m working on it, OK?
A love like this doesn’t live in your heart. She’s too big for that. She’s in your blood, your bones. She’s in your DNA. The places where people think racism is. She envelops you with an impenetrable armour.
When you love something, or someone, that much, of course you’re frightened when you see her under attack, and of course you’re furious at anyone or anything that would dare to harm her.
I am furious that my mother is in more and more danger every hurricane season. And I am terrified at the thought of living through my old age, when my body aches the way my mother’s does now, in an unpredictable environment with disaster at every turn. What happens when my knees don’t have enough spring left in them to run from a wildfire? What happens when I’ve lost it all in a flood, but I’m too old to work again?
But this love is strong enough to break through the terror. She is hot enough to burn through anger and turn into fury. She can shake you out of your despair and propel you to the front of the battlefield.
It’s a love that can also – even in the teeth of these most insurmountable odds – give me hope. If I’m brave enough to accept it. I’ve seen her looking back at me in the eyes of some of the bravest climate justice warriors I have ever met, and I can feel that tickling tingle of ‘maybe, just maybe, we’ll be okay’.
A love like that doesn’t seek peace, or even vengeance. She seeks justice. And she’s strong enough, ferocious enough, brave enough to burn this bitch to the ground.
Mary Annaïse Heglar
Dear Planet Earth,
I am sorry we have misused you, messed you up, and physically abused you.
Now we are pleading for forgiveness, although we have done nothing to stop it, we just brought it upon ourselves.
It’s like watching a paper fall, and instead of catching it you watch it drop to the floor.
It’s like watching a child drown, and instead of saving him, you slowly watch him sink, sink slowly to the ground.
Because planet earth, we had the chance to catch you. We had the chance to save you.
Though people chose to ignore you. They chose to look away and say, ‘that’s not my problem to face.’
I’m sorry that when you stumbled and fell, we didn’t kiss your bruise better: we didn’t place a plaster over your cut: we didn’t even blow it better, we just left it, untouched. I’m sorry that we paid more attention to our problems, than we did yours. For we forgot that you, planet earth, are the reason we breathe and live, and us humans let that message pass our minds, way too quickly.
And for that I am truly sorry.
Help me correct our mistake.
Help me catch our world: save our planet.
Jenny Ngugi,
