Lessons From A Broken Clock

Mother listened through the trees, and felt with their leaves. The grass, the flowers, water and air, she is felt, and feels, everywhere.

So as the construction workers are made to dig up her dirt and cut down her trees, in ones, then twos, then threes, she feels a sharp sting as their shovels pierce the dirt, and a rattle in her bones as their chainsaws go to work.

When the companies pour chemicals they make into her rivers, she has to choice but to take it, and the animals drink it, and they're never the same again.

As the air is made warmer than she ever meant it to be, her ice sculptures melt and the animals flee. Left vacant and wet, with cobwebs and bones, like a haunted house, that was always meant to be their home.

But Mother can't speak to us the way we can to each other. She can't tell us just how much it hurts with words or tears. So it's our responsibility, as it has been for years, to keep watching Mother, look at her face, consider her expression, and how much we erase. Does it hurt her? If it does, how can we change it? And when we figure that out, how do we arrange it? But if you don't want to do it for her, do it for yourself, because without Mother, there's no room on your shelf. Not for your trophies, for your food, or your clothes...

Because without Mother we're dead, and that's when the books close.