Take Time To Renew Your Spirit

For Earth Day, this prayer is reposted from May 13, 2010, nearly a month after the BP oil gusher started spewing oil into the beautiful Gulf of Mexico:

T. Thorn Coyle blogs at Thorncoyle.com on her thoughts on practice, philosophy, politics and love. She wrote A Prayer For My Beloved in response to the catastrophe in the Gulf. Here are excerpts from it. To read the entire prayer, click here.

You have carried us, these long millions of years,
We beasts, we leafy fronds, we crouching walkers.
The ice has come, the ice has gone again.
Your crust has softened, hardened, cooled, and warmed…

photo: NASA: The Earth as seen from Apollo 17

Oil gushes from your sandy floor, betrayal.
Chemicals suffuse once fertile soil.
Holes are rent above your southern quadrant,
Mountains blasted open, or felled clear.

Photo: Georgianne Nienaber

Your oceans saline quick, flow in our blood.
Lover, forever we can say, “I’m sorry,”
But actions speak far louder than strong words,
And we, though brave and brash, are also feeble.

Lover, I fall now to my knees before you.
I will not beg forgiveness, not just yet.
My good friends shall be gathered all around me,
Holding hands, we will make better still, amends

invitro Pia Ferrara's first act of protest. Alison & Pia Ferrara. Illustrator from the SMH, Rocco Fazzari