Letters to the Earth

And you know what, old friend? I’m tempted to read that poem literally!

Richard Holloway

The earth’s name is unique. We need to keep it.

E = Energetic

A = Amazing

R = Respectful

T = Trusty

H = Happy

The letters of the EARTH are what keeps us alive, without it we will be extinct.

Please forgive us for our mistakes.

It’s up to us to support the earth.

Emily Trenouth-Wood, 11

I got up this morning and took my mug of tea to the open window. I could hear the sound of blackbirds and blue tits on the grassy bank and in the hawthorn trees that edge the field behind my garden. I stood and felt the warm sun on my skin and watched as they flew: blue, black, brown, grey, yellow, red, with straw and moss in their beaks for lining their nests.

There was a little nest, exposed by the winter, in the climbing hydrangea on my neighbour’s fence – the separation that was required between our spaces. It was perfect, nestled against the creosoted panels – once proud trees – and the gardener’s wire that holds the sprawling plant upright. I imagined the mother there with her babies, safe and secure behind a wall of lush green vegetation. Shielded from the prying eyes of next door’s ginger tomcat.

The sun went behind a scudding spring cloud and I watched as a pair of rooks walked along the top of the wall below the bird feeder, surveying the scene, pretending to each other that they hadn’t found a tasty worm or juicy seed. My eye travelled down towards the newly planted pond, a swish and a splash and the smooth newt had disappeared back below the surface of the green-tinged water. The plants are beginning to grow up around it – the ragged robin and clary sage, the water plantain and flowering rush in their first spurt of spring. I opened the door and stepped outside into my wildlife haven and stood beside the pond. I am as still as the green-black pool.

My mind was empty of the day, empty of children and mortgages, cars and cleaning, housework, ironing, shopping, meetings and things to be done, bought and consumed. A collared dove, soft grey and heavy, landed on a hawthorn bough and it bowed under the bird’s weight. A second joined it and I closed my eyes to listen to the soft cooing they made to one another as they walked up and down the branches, their heads bobbing as they searched for insects. I am a quiet intruder in their busy lives.

My patio and flower beds, the concrete and paving stones, houses, high-rises, office blocks and motorways, reservoirs and dams seem to me, to us, to take precedence as we order and build nature out of existence. The ancient forests of Britain, Amazonia, Romania, Borneo, Ghana, the eastern United States, Mexico and Australia have been razed to the ground. I have destroyed half of all the trees on earth. I have killed my brothers and sisters for decking and picture frames, warmth and convenience.

I opened my eyes and looked up to the vast blue expanse of sky, swirled with wispy clouds and heard the high-pitched pewee-pewee of a red kite high above, circling. Two more appeared and then suddenly there were eight or ten red kites, their tails dipping and turning as they swooped in great arcs, riding thermals, thriving and free. I drained my mug of tea, now gone cold, and headed back inside, my heart filled, my mind clear as I sat down at my desk to write a letter to the earth.

Justine Railton

Dear Mr Walnut Tree,

I would like to apologise on the behalf of mankind for ruining your beautiful earth. I would also like to thank you for holding strong and even managing to hold my weight, year after year. Thank you for being such an easy-to-climb tree, and thank you for being there whenever I have needed you. I would also like to say sorry on the behalf of my dad for leaning the old fence on your trunk. I hope you don’t mind me swinging on you all the time.

I’m sorry for carving my initials at the very top of you with my penknife. I shan’t do it again, I promise.

Just a quick question – were you planted or did you just grow naturally? If you were planted, when was it? And who did it?

I’m sorry for not maintaining a clean and tidy space around you on the floor of the garden. And the most utterly sincere apology that I would like to make to you today is that I’m truly sorry for letting Mum pay that stupid old man to come along and chop your head off last year.

I hope you enjoy your current position in the garden, and if you don’t, please feel very free to ask if you would like to be moved.

Thank you for not dying yet even though you live next to two apple trees that I’m not even sure are alive. Let’s just call them the ‘apple producing zombie trees’.

To conclude I would like to say don’t die, carry on living bold and strong for as long as you possibly can.

YOURS SINCERELY YOUR CLIMBER,

Benedict C. Winter, 12

You gave me milk when I arrived, sweet and warm. And slowly colours came; they had no names, not then, and the sounds no source. I had no hands, no feet. I was just breath slowly folding into skin and there was no soil, no rain, not a leaf or a shell.

At four years old you gave me fields and stars waiting; they are still waiting. Then streams and banks thick with grass began to appear, a path lined with daffodils, wet sand and gulls calling from within the light coming off the sea baptising everything. You hid so many jewels: blue eggs in lined nests, sparkling feathers, pink and yellow shells, small silver fishes. And at night silent and moving closer now, wolves and pulling waters.

You didn’t show me the dawn and the dusk until I was able to be still, until I was able to open these doors by myself. To know them as beginnings and endings. We were always part of each other. I am salts and water as is every leaf, every lion, every hill. And I am every river, every flower, every wave, every stone and they are me, the hunted and the hunter.

Now I can see you shining, glistening, moving through space, around the star holding your precious cargo of whales, goldcrests, petals. Yes, your cargo of dreams, of love distilling every bitter seed. Brushed with clouds.

It is my hope that love will prevail – that we will prevail through loving, through knowing every seed and star is love. That in time I will hold you as you hold me. That we will know the end of isolation and the beckoning of the reality of interdependence. That this is balance which is wisdom, look at the route the river takes. The branches leaning into the light.

I give you thanks. For the dew, for the sound of leaves, for the way water moves light, for birdsong, for the deserts, for hunger. For the cup of desire.

I have yet to learn that looking after myself begins with loving you, that we are husband and wife, that I sleep in your arms and drink your milk.

And now growing older you show me the symmetry of leaves, how death takes hold and how deep your scent is sweet in spring.

Peter Owen Jones

This week all the trees in my street are blossoming

And the world turns around again.

But we are eleven years, six months and counting

To hold on to what we have.

Tilly Lunken

It’s finally happening. We’re finally talking about climate change. It’s messy, but it’s happening. To be honest, we don’t really have the language, and that’s largely because we don’t know how to feel about it.