When the first sunray penetrates her sedated winter sleep,
and pricks her brittle brown skin,
She is reminded of the time before civilization shackled her –
when rivers roared through her veins,
when her legs were lithe green boughs, unburnable,
when flowers bloomed endlessly from her eyelashes and earlobes,
A time when she, so full of buzzing and nectar,
thrust life into every hollow of the earth.

The heat of the sun thaws the accumulation of snow
that held her anger slow and cold.
This is her waking.
This is her piercing recognition of loss.
And as the water soaks into her,
she swells with green fury
and riots
against the rigidity man imposed on her dynamic kingdom.

She sprouts mayhem from the hedges and saplings,
wedges weeds through cracks in concrete,
summons armies of bees to defend her gardens.

She cries down upon her land, trying to rouse it
from its chained submission,
and wailing with the dawn, calls to every blade of grass,
Remember how it used to be!
Remember how it used to be!