Our Body Earth, June 24-July 8, 2014, looking “down there“ from the plane window

I wonder, why does she, this Earth, suffer cuts?
Flying through her breath, looking down,
I see new landscapes and know these are parts of our body,
She is scarred with dirt roads, fences, and mines in lines and squiggles and depressions.

Circular fields with roads chopped clear to the center
Appear as sundials of the gods,
Unreadable clocks ticking, or waiting.

Square fields of skin cells arrogantly claimed as our own,

Depleted, burned,
Having given their all, lie fallow,
In need of water and nourishment.

This renegade geometry not of her design will be reclaimed, in her abundance of time.

We cut our self and then look away
As though the bleeding water will know how to stop or where to flow.

Rivers governed by sturdy muscle and cartilage and tissue.
Dirt, rock, vegetation
Arteries divide and subdivide, reaching and stretching
Determined to feed all

But for now, I can see her compassion, this earth
Allowing a cut so that we can see it heal
So that we might cut more carefully
Empathically thanking her for this generosity:
An education she knew we needed.

I look down through the window and see in these river veins and arteries
See in the trees lining the feeding flow,
My initials, as if she wants to say hello
and please, protect us.

Though you are not aware of us, I am aware of us.

She interrupts this etch-a-sketch cloud hubris
with a mountain range, or a storm,
Erasing all we've done to her, and
Taming a desert with an assertion of stark, voracious beauty.

She sheds impurities, a volcanic pop

Cities look like sores, roads as intricate tattoos

We skedaddle here and there purposed with mind-stuff
which she tolerates and we recount, with gravity
As if to make us matter to her.

But she doesn't need reason to care
About that which is herself.
I feel us and am grateful for the tear in our eye.
She is loved. I am loved.  You, are loved.