When the Earth Speaks Back
I wake with the sound of leaves pressed against the glass,
a tremor of green against a weary world.
The mind grows restless when rivers falter,
when birds migrate earlier than memory recalls,
and the soil turns thin beneath careless feet.
Ecoanxiety is no stranger: it lingers,
a scholar’s grief, a child’s cry, a farmer’s silence,
the unease of knowing too much and doing too little,
the weight of graphs and charts that bleed in red,
the forecasts of futures where silence reigns.
Yet grief can be a compass if one dares.
It points to the soil rather than despair,
for hands that plant seeds into broken ground,
for rivers that remember their song,
for forests that whisper: begin again.
I walk outside with the unease in my chest.
It quivers like a trapped sparrow,
but soon the sparrow beats into rhythm.
It teaches me that anxiety is energy misnamed,
that dread can be direction when tended well.
The earth does not scorn our trembling.
It takes it into the curve of hills,
into the dark compost that births light,
into the slow patience of stones,
and offers back: resilience.
Look: the moss repairs the fallen oak,
the fungi write networks in silence,
the tide pulls back only to return,
even fire leaves behind fertile ground,
renewal waits beneath destruction’s face.
What then is ecoanxiety,
if not the mind aligning with the planet’s pulse,
if not the recognition that harm is shared,
that sorrow is evidence of kinship,
that fear is proof of belonging.
I study the pond where lilies drift.
The water is clouded yet never refuses reflection.
My own shadow bends upon the surface,
and the lilies do not judge its shape,
they open to the sun regardless.
Thus must we act: not by denial,
not by banishing the grief that stirs,
but by folding it into the rhythm of labor,
by tilling the sorrow into gardens,
by planting futures in the ground of worry.
One seed becomes a covenant
with the child who has not yet seen a forest,
with the poet who seeks shade under oak,
with the scientist charting the return of birds,
with the river itself, restless and eternal.
The meadow is an answer to despair,
the hive is a lecture on persistence,
the tide is an essay on renewal,
the mountain is a silent dissertation on endurance,
each landscape is a library if one reads with care.
I find myself kneeling to weeds.
They grow where neglect has taken hold,
their roots are arguments against abandonment,
their flowers are proofs that nothing is wasted,
even what is despised holds medicine.
Anxiety sharpens me like flint.
It sparks fire where complacency once lived.
It burns away the indifference of comfort.
It teaches urgency without cruelty.
It reminds that time is both fleeting and fertile.
The young are listening with heavy hearts.
They dream of oceans they may not touch,
they read of glaciers more myth than sight,
they inherit maps marked with wounds,
yet they carry shovels alongside grief.
I tell them: the earth is not an elegy,
it is a dialogue still unfolding.
Your fear is a chapter but not the end,
your sorrow is a stanza but not the whole song,
the conclusion waits for the labor of your hands.
Walk gently yet do not walk idly.
Let each step mend a fragment,
let each gesture restore a thread,
for the world is a tapestry unraveling,
and we are both cause and cure.
When despair arrives, ask the tree:
it will remind you of roots unseen.
When fatigue sets in, ask the tide:
it will remind you of endless return.
When silence deafens, ask the bird:
it will remind you of dawn’s persistence.
The earth is a physician without speech.
It prescribes wonder without cost.
It teaches through repetition, not decree.
And it heals not by denial but by balance.
Its clinic is everywhere one pauses to notice.
Thus I make my vow with trembling voice:
I will not turn away from my unrest.
I will give it to the soil as offering.
I will let it rise as green forgiveness.
I will live as if repair were possible.
For ecoanxiety is not a curse,
it is the earth speaking through us,
and to answer it is to choose life.