Letter to Earth

I know you suffer. It’s an old story.
But I believe the day will come

when your rivers will run pure again,
when your seas will be clean and dazzled

with fish. Nights will be black again
and crackle with starlight. For every

living thing that went extinct, new ones
will take their place. In your marrow,

the memory of us will turn again to carbon
and remain there, finally harmless.

Air will flow sweet around the trunks
of trees, waterfalls will pound

the river rocks, and the sky will fill
with insects and birds, wild and loud

*

Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic”, “Moraine” (both from Pearl Editions) and “Morpheus Dips His Oar” (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and two chapbooks, “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions) and “Along the Fault Line” (Picture Show Press). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, ONE ART, and many other publications. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.