Eyes Opened Wide

As a kid I would sit and listen to the rain, 

Thinking of Mother Earth’s pain.

I knew our climate was rising, 

My worry went ignored, unsurprising. 

For what did a kid know? 

That with spring, the sun melts the snow? 

I would watch the seasons change, 

And capture Mother Earth’s beautiful range,

As winter would bleed into spring, 

As summer accepted the rain’s suffocating cling. 

I watched with open, wide eyes, 

Holding onto my long, dreadful sigh. 

As a teenager, I am desperate to be heard.

My worry grows each day with my fear, 

thinking snow in April is absurd–

As it felt like summer last year. 

I’ve watched floods destroy the land, 

As fires ravage forests, dwindling them to ash. 

I’ve watched our time slip through our fingers like sand,

As animal species disappear in a flash–

The fault is all ours, not theirs. 

Yet, many still ask “who cares?” 

Millions of species of animals care. 

Mother Earth is their home, too. 

Yet all we do is stare–

As their home is destroyed, 

As their dwindling health is a fact we avoid.

Millions of people care. 

This is our only home, 

There is no planet two-

To escape our despair.