Illustrate us in sepia tone
Dashing amid meadow
With tousled hair
Battered knees
And eyes squinted
Sun blinded.
We laugh
Blithe in circles.
Us children of nature's yearning
No more fabrications
To these hollow lives
We dance feral offbeat.
As one,
We sculpt our castles
Among smoldered, weeping forests.
With nature's abundant ashes
Within our palms
We feel its scorching ruins.
“This cannot be undone …”
Alone,
We solemnly whisper
“We cannot save you …”
Earth trembles
Filched of its beauty,
Betrayed by its children.

Breathe in
Breathe out
Frantically, Earth gasps
Straining to subsist.
Anguished at last
We compress our palms
Against its wheezing, tainted soil
Forcing air to emit
From within its scalded lungs.
Forlorn pleas
Murmur amid the rattling trees
While steadily
Their crumbling, shattering roots
Feebly moan
Isolated from their sole mother.
“This cannot be undone …”
We solemnly whisper
“We cannot save you …”
Earth trembles
Filched of its beauty
Betrayed by its children.

Tenderly kissing its soil
With our fingertips
Out of this demise
We gradually mold life.
Akin to an exposed infant
We embrace it with warmth
Nurturing it as it nurtured us.
We strain
Liberating its suffocating skies
By smothering profuse smog
Within our own quivering hands.
We consume the pollution
So that
Earth may not ingest its poison.

“This can be undone …”
Together
We incessantly whisper
“We can save you …”
Earth illuminates
Restored of its beauty
Salvaged by its children.

Now
Let us silently pass on
To be swallowed and
Devoured utterly by vanishing soil.
Let us eternally rest
Lying within
Our keeper's dense blanket
So that
One day
We may
Vigorously sprout upward.
At last awakened
Flourishing atop breathing earth
As a lone swaying blossom.