Molly Vigeant, a youth member of our congregation, wrote and performed this poem for our Earth Day service on April 21, 2013. I asked her to write a poem that makes the link between our disconnection from the natural world and the phenomenon of mass violence. Thanks Molly!
The disconnect between life and the living
Longs to be mended
And yet,
We’ve pretended
Day after day
That it’s all okay,
A man enters a school,
Intentions clear
Not a single fear
In him,
But fear radiated
Shook the whole world,
Runners going to the finish line
Now blind
In the fires,
Runners now running
To escape
This hopeless fate
Pain in exchange for pain.
Grief for grief.
Perhaps,
Just perhaps,
If we listen to the wind
And free ourselves,
Maybe then the pain of the world can be lessened.
The people alive and dead,
Have souls here to stay
We are in nature
And nature is in us
This planet is our home,
We need to feel it in our bones
Connect and stop ignoring
When a child is born
We welcome them,
Nurture them
Tell them to be who they are,
Tell them they can be anything they dream of,
We tell them to
breathe in the world,
yet our air is stale
were you ever taught to breathe?
We ignore the nature outside of us
in attempt to nurture the nature within us
But the imbalance
breaks both
weakens both
Kills off both,
We don’t realize what we’re doing,
We don’t mean to do it.
We don’t think about it.
We don’t feel it.
This is how we live.
But the disconnect
Between life
And the living,
May unearth these planted souls,
Be yourself
Or we may wash away
Without another day
To say
All the things,
We never got to say
And without another day
To say
All the things,
We may never get to say
