...though it doesn't love me

*a way-serious dramatic follow-up to #5 in the previous post*

You can love me if you want to. Call me beautiful. I don’t mind. Write poems about me. Write this thing about me. It doesn’t effect me. You do not have it within your power to flatter me. Or to bother me. Certainly not to hurt me. Certainly not to destroy me. And yet I can destroy you. And I have, just as I gave birth to you. Nothing happens unless I allow it. I converse with the cosmos. It rocks me and stirs me. You simply walk along my edges. Immerse your feet, your body within me. Ride on top of me in your fancy machines. You’re proud of them aren’t you? So proud of everything you’ve done. You think you rule the world. But you don’t. I do. It’s nice that you worry about me. It’s nice that you sign petitions, wear t-shirts, march down the streets in numbers, all to save me, protect me. But let’s get real about this. I don’t need you to save me. I’ve crushed your cities. I’ve subsumed you again and again. I’ve broken your proud civilizations down into tiny bits, leaving nothing but the sand I sift as I please. I’ve carried your warships. I’ve carried your slaveships. I’ve carried every kind of foolishness you can come up with, though sometimes I do feel the need to remind you. I sink your proud armadas, throw your history off course, without any significant effort. Really, look at me. I’m the same. Do you really think I’m perturbed by your oil sludge, your barrels of toxic waste, your pesticides, garbage, trillions of tiny plastic fragments? Do you think it bothers me that you melt my ice caps? They’ll be back in no time. I was here long before I birthed you, and I will be here as I am now, rocking with the universe, gradually breaking down and reforming whatever I touch, long after there is anyone left to remember you. So don’t flatter yourself in thinking you can or need to save me. Save yourselves. You’re poisoning yourselves. You’re killing yourselves. You have tiny moments in time compared to my infinitude, and you’re wasting them destroying yourselves and everything you touch. But I am not threatened. I am not dying. I am beyond your comprehension. I am the ocean.


*recycled (in line, kinda, with its vague ecological message) from the Radiant Retreat, Maya Tulum, Mexico, March 2008 ("recycled" meaning I wrote it a while ago for a different purpose. Thanks to Gypsy at Heart for pointing out the confusion I was sowing)*