Poetry for the planet
Distinguished poets reflect on the magnificent but endangered planet we call home.
© James Morgan / WWF-US
The Living Planet Report provides a comprehensive look at the health of our planet—including biodiversity, ecosystems, and demand on natural resources—and what it means for humans and wildlife.
It’s clear that we are pushing our planet to the brink. Human activity is taking an unprecedented toll on wildlife, natural places, and the resources we need to survive.
But there is still time to act. To ensure a sustainable future for all living beings, we need to reverse the loss of nature while tackling climate change.
The poems
The Last Safe Habitat
By Dr. Craig Santos Perez
For the Kauai'i O'o, whose song was last heard in 1987
I don't want our daughter to know
that Hawai'i is the bird extinction capital
of the world. I don't want her to walk
around the island feeling haunted
by tree roots buried under concrete.
I don't want her to fear the invasive
predators who slither, pounce,
bite, swallow, disease, and multiply.
I don't want her to see paintings
and photographs of birds she'll never
witness in the wild.
I don't want her to
imagine their bones in dark museum
drawers. I don't want her to hear
their voice recordings on the internet.
I don't want her to memorize and recite
the names of 77 lost species and subspecies.
I don't want her to draw a timeline
with the years each was “first collected”
and “last sighted.”
I don't want her to learn
about the Kaua'i 'O'o, who was observed
atop a flowering 'Ohi'a tree, calling
for a mate, day after day, season after
season, because he didn't know he was
the last of his kind—
until one day, he disappeared,
forever, into a nest of avian silence.
I don't want our daughter to calculate
how many miles of fencing is needed
to protect the endangered birds
that remain. I don't want her to realize
the most serious causes of extinction
can't be fenced out.
I want to convince her
that extinction is not the end. I want
to convince her that extinction is
just a migration to the last safe habitat
on earth.
I want to convince her
that our winged relatives have arrived
safely to their destination: a wondrous
island with a climate we can never
change, and a rainforest fertile
with seeds and song.
© Patrick J Mitchell
Characteristics of Life
By Camille Dungy
Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
speak of underneathednessand the welcome of mosses,
of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.
I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.
Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
one thing today and another tomorrow
and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.
I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.
Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.
Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
I will speak
the impossible hope of the firefly.
You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
such wordless desire.
To say it is mindless is missing the point.
© Beowulf Sheehan
Love Letter to the World
By Frank X Walker
I love you world.
Love your seven different faces.
Love your healing waters
wide and deep.
Love the thing you have
with the sun and moon
and what it teaches us
about companionship,
about change,
about revolution.
Love the mirror at your navel,
how it shows off your hemispheres,
illustrating important lessons
about balance,
about reflection,
about centering ourselves.
Love how much like little worlds
we are. How our earthquake
is your shiver, your sneeze a tsunami,
an avalanche, a mudslide.
When you have hot flashes
we call it drought.
You once covered your whole body
with ice to cool a fever.
When you weep, daily,
over our continued ignorance,
our epic failures and petty squabbles
—our every transgression,
your waters
break and we are born again.
Love your outreach, our mutual attraction,
your gravitational pull.
For every treasure we steal
from your womb
you send us hail and thunderstorms.
When we invent poisons and no antidotes
and build monuments to ourselves
you send tornadoes and hurricanes
to remind us of how small we truly are.
And yet, every day you continue to humble,
inspire, and move us to tears
with your natural beauty.
Our own efforts to mimic your vistas
are what we dare call art and dance,
music and poetry,
architecture and language,
and love.
It is the only thing we have ever gotten right.
We can't pass the course on humanity
if we keep failing the lessons
on harmony
and until we unlearn fear and hate.
Thank you, world, for this
open-book exam before us,
for still believing
we are worthy of your love
We who love you black alredy know
that everything we do to you
we also do to ourselves.
© Patrick J Mitchell
Eagle Poem
By Joy Harjo
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
© Denise Toombs
The World Beyond My Window
By Joshua Sasse
I have stared in solitary bliss,
understanding very little or indeed,
none of this.
This earth, whose petals we all will selfishly to pick,
this sky who day by day we poison sick,
these waters whom each one of us without
should live a low existence, hand to mouth.
Then each and every monetary minute
that whips us all that we no longer sing it,
reminds Me, as a hunger pang
of all the songs the ancients sang,
of land that gave in grateful loads abounding,
of harvest moons where village bells were sounding,
of Gods & nymphs in sacred water dwelling
that we, in grateful reverence
tales were to telling; to our children, to the youth –
so the torch was carried forth
and the wonders of the earth,
were all treasured for their worth.
Now I grow pale with watching
as the heavens fill with smog,
and the banks of every river start to fill
and there with littered plastic clog,
where parks become attractions
as a cornered beast within a zoo
and the wonders of the world
are melted down to factory glue,
I see conscience lay forgotten
I see courtesy lie dead,
and with both those pillars fallen
stands a sorry tale instead.
© Joshua Sasse
© Philipp Kanstinger / WWF