EARTH

If you link your spirits together
Tread softly and call her gently,
in peace.
She will reveal her secrets.

Like a dancer of many veils,
Teasing, tantalising and testing.
If you hold, you will reap her fruit.

She will take you through her forests,
luscious green, fecund and ripe;
The Japanese have a name for this
shinrin-yoku. Forest walking.

And then she drops her veil
Shows you her rain- washed self,
fragrant with life.
The Greeks have a word for this
Petrichor
Stone with the liquid
From the veins of Gods.

Beyond,
She will show you
A great beauty in the barren.
Where silky scorching time
slips through your fingers.
She will walk with you
Amongst peaks and gorges and dunes
And will let to quench your thirst
At her green oasis.
There is life here.
She hides them under her shifting sands
Away from a punishing sky.

She can be majestic too,
In her snowy aloofness
Yet , she lets you wander
through her valleys and river gorges,
Her glaciers and up her jagged peaks
Where she reaches out
To kiss the sky

There is this ugly word
That becomes a refrain
When we talk of her –
Conquer, conquer, conquer,

Push her too hard
And she will conquer
With her molten heat
That she buries deep within her.
That unleashed fury
Will leave a flaming trail
Destroying all in its wake.