My Longest Relationship (& Yours Too)
A love letter to dear Earth
Dear Earth,
Almost half a century ago, you pulled together the ingredients you needed to make me.
In the beginning I was a single-celled zygote, magicked from two halves of DNA. Right away I was hungry. First, dear Earth, you offered me the energy stored in my mother’s egg. Next you offered me her endometrium. After ten weeks, my nutrients started arriving in placental blood. You nourished mum so she could nourish me - fruits and vegetables, grains, the fish and chips she craved when she had morning sickness.
When I emerged from that safe dark place I met a different face of you. Brilliant light and loud noises. Your air entered my lungs. There was my mum’s face. My dad’s. He is gone from us now, but he was there.
As I grew, I learnt to manipulate you. To stand on your firm lap. To use my own fat fingers to feed myself. To draw your trees and your grass. To enjoy your animals - our naughty dog Ben, the ducks at the pond.
For a long time, as I did my caretakers, I took you for granted. I didn’t question where the milk came from, the eggy bread with red sauce, the chocolate buttons. It was there when I needed it. I didn’t wonder about how my red dress came to be. I didn’t want to go on boring ‘walks’ or look at boring ‘views’.
When did I come to appreciate you? You brought me delight from the very beginning - light flickering on the wall, the magical insides of foxglove flowers, the squidge of mud between my toes, the opulent piles of fallen cherry blossom. It was only much later that I learnt to say thank you. That I began to ask how and why. That I realised that you are also alive.
This is a love letter to you, darling Earth.
I don’t always feel this love. Mostly it’s tucked away as I go about my busy days. I still often take you for granted. I blithely imagine that you will always be able to offer me the bounty of your harvests. I forget the damage we have already done to you, the terrible damage that we are doing. I don’t even say thank you for the plum you gave me this morning, the blackbird song, the gulps of oxygen.
I am asking for your help, sweet Earth. You already do so much for me, and I am such a forgetful, foolish creature. I want to remember just how much I receive from you in every moment. I want to fulfil my duty of enjoying you as much as I can. I want to keep speaking up for you and being honest about how I harm you. I want to keep loving you and feeling you love me back.
I imagine you nodding at me in assent. You can ‘wake me up’ with cool breezes and soft rain, you say. You can make apple juice so delicious that it is impossible not to feel a swelling of gratitude when I taste it. You can keep showing me glimpses of your astonishing beauty - when I properly open my eyes, wherever I look.
I AM you, dear Earth. A Satya-shaped piece. Here for a while, and then merging back into your great body. Where I came from. Here I am, for now. Looking out across your valleys, and tingling with wonder.
What a wild, mysterious, glorious ride this is.
With so much love,
Satya <3
During June I am offering Kissing the Earth - an opportunity to snuggle up closer to the Earth with daily poems and prompts. Read more here.
I wrote a whole book of letters to the Earth during a more intensive phase of activism a few years ago - find it in all the usual places.
“Satya-shaped piece!” 💞💞 sending this piece love today from another earthling 😊
What a beautiful post! When I first saw the title, I assumed this would be about our relationship with ourselves, but of course you are right and even before we were conscious, we were living in relationship to the earth, held and nourished by the earth, tiny pieces of her cut into our own unique shapes. Thank you for helping me to pause and breathe in the beauty of this world!