Letters to the Earth. Группа авторов

insects. I am a quiet intruder in their busy lives.

      My patio and flower beds, the concrete and paving stones, houses, high-rises, office blocks and motorways, reservoirs and dams seem to me, to us, to take precedence as we order and build nature out of existence. The ancient forests of Britain, Amazonia, Romania, Borneo, Ghana, the eastern United States, Mexico and Australia have been razed to the ground. I have destroyed half of all the trees on earth. I have killed my brothers and sisters for decking and picture frames, warmth and convenience.

      I opened my eyes and looked up to the vast blue expanse of sky, swirled with wispy clouds and heard the high-pitched pewee-pewee of a red kite high above, circling. Two more appeared and then suddenly there were eight or ten red kites, their tails dipping and turning as they swooped in great arcs, riding thermals, thriving and free. I drained my mug of tea, now gone cold, and headed back inside, my heart filled, my mind clear as I sat down at my desk to write a letter to the earth.

      Justine Railton

Dear Mr Walnut Tree

      Dear Mr Walnut Tree,

      I would like to apologise on the behalf of mankind for ruining your beautiful earth. I would also like to thank you for holding strong and even managing to hold my weight, year after year. Thank you for being such an easy-to-climb tree, and thank you for being there whenever I have needed you. I would also like to say sorry on the behalf of my dad for leaning the old fence on your trunk. I hope you don’t mind me swinging on you all the time.

      I’m sorry for carving my initials at the very top of you with my penknife. I shan’t do it again, I promise.

      Just a quick question – were you planted or did you just grow naturally? If you were planted, when was it? And who did it?

      I’m sorry for not maintaining a clean and tidy space around you on the floor of the garden. And the most utterly sincere apology that I would like to make to you today is that I’m truly sorry for letting Mum pay that stupid old man to come along and chop your head off last year.

      I hope you enjoy your current position in the garden, and if you don’t, please feel very free to ask if you would like to be moved.

      Thank you for not dying yet even though you live next to two apple trees that I’m not even sure are alive. Let’s just call them the ‘apple producing zombie trees’.

To conclude I would like to say don’t die, carry on living bold and strong for as long as you possibly can.

      YOURS SINCERELY YOUR CLIMBER,

      Benedict C. Winter, 12

Milk

      You gave me milk when I arrived, sweet and warm. And slowly colours came; they had no names, not then, and the sounds no source. I had no hands, no feet. I was just breath slowly folding into skin and there was no soil, no rain, not a leaf or a shell.

      At four years old you gave me fields and stars waiting; they are still waiting. Then streams and banks thick with grass began to appear, a path lined with daffodils, wet sand and gulls calling from within the light coming off the sea baptising everything. You hid so many jewels: blue eggs in lined nests, sparkling feathers, pink and yellow shells, small silver fishes. And at night silent and moving closer now, wolves and pulling waters.

      You didn’t show me the dawn and the dusk until I was able to be still, until I was able to open these doors by myself. To know them as beginnings and endings. We were always part of each other. I am salts and water as is every leaf, every lion, every hill. And I am every river, every flower, every wave, every stone and they are me, the hunted and the hunter.

      Now I can see you shining, glistening, moving through space, around the star holding your precious cargo of whales, goldcrests, petals. Yes, your cargo of dreams, of love distilling every bitter seed. Brushed with clouds.

It is my hope that love will prevail – that we will prevail through 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

All the Trees

      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