What have we done to deserve this, Mother Earth?

*This is a sestina, a French form of poetry consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. The final words of each line repeat in a predetermined sequence in each stanza.

Dear flower, what do you do in spring but bloom?
Yet, when winter hits, you let yourself wilt?
The weight drags you down when your soft petals drop towards the Earth.
Your warm, stable grass lays empty and cold.
Oh poor flower, your glow temporary,
Your song, a single woe.

Dear Earth, shatter me with your guilt, your woe.
Leave the gentle blooms,
they are only temporary.
Unfazed, you let them wilt?
Oh Earth, your heart of stone crumbles in the cold.
Your soft petals and lemongrass valleys lay dead in the earth.

Why do you loom, troubled Earth?
Why does your cherished song cry out in woe?
We all know your warmth, cherish it, why are you cold?
How come the strict cold shrivels your pliant blooms?
Why do you let yourself fester and wilt?
Why do you surrender, when the gloom is only temporary?

Oh flower, we all know your beauty is temporary.
Your glow is a dim pulse to the brilliant Earth.
That same glow, a sorrowful wilt.
Your beauty is a miserable mutter of woe.
You cling to your blooms,
while they shrivel in the cold.

Oh earth, how do you stand so unyielding to the cold?
You must know it’s only temporary.
You stand bravely behind your dying blooms.
A coward sprouted from the earth.
How do you ignore their woes?
How do you stand, while they wilt?

You seem under a facade, you wilt,
and weep to the unforgiving cold.
You, behind the flowers’ woes.
Their suffering is only temporary,
to all but you, mother earth.
You hide from your eternally slumbering blooms.

They will scream you’re a coward, to abandon your blooms.
They say: only a traitor can survive mother earth.
mother earth is eternal, you—a wonderful, blooming flower—are a temporary subject.

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