My Sisters

My sisters,

I invite you to notice

Our skin

A reflection of Earth

Our roots

How they twist and wind like hers

We are fertile soil

We are abundance

Lifegiving

And taking

Longing to fulfill our nature

Lacking what is ours by birthright

Sunlight

Water

Air

We have been graded and paved over

Our peaks and valleys claimed

Our essence diluted

But now

The world is burning

And change is coming

We cannot waste our precious energy sowing the seeds of our inheritance in ground that is unyielding

For far too long our ancestors tended soil that was not their own

We must not do the same

My sisters,

I implore you

Use this time to regenerate

Hibernate

Restore thy selves

For when the ashes settle

It is we who will sprout anew

More full and lush than we can even dream

But first

We must rest