Skyline College Celebrates Earth Week with Dear Human
Featured speaker: San Mateo County Poet Laureate Emerita Aileen Cassinetto
April 23, 2024, 1:30PM, Building 5
*De-stress walk & campus clean-up at 10:30am, trash bags and gloves for collecting waste will be provided
UPDATE:
This transdisciplinary event brought together English & science majors who shared artworks and stories, and wrote the collaborative poem, “Dear Human, Dear Earth.” Read the post-event article here.
Dear Human, Dear Earth
A Skyline College Earth Week Community Poem
–with lines by Taylor Swift
April 23, 2024
You left your typewriter at my apartment*
Like, who uses typewriters anyway?*
I feel your pain
I see your scars
America is great
Time to heal from the wounds of plastic, bullets, and the trash littered in our door, time to wrap up and make a new door for the journey we take.
America the not so beautiful.
The shade of the smog turning bright greens into swamp and decay. Turning bright shining stars into dark and grey.
We will save you, despite our worst nature, because of our best nature.
Dear human, dear earth,
I am sorry for staying silent while you are being destroyed. It burdens my soul to see that not much is being done to help reduce your pain and yet there is a lot to be done
Let’s make our Earth happier together with the little things you can do.
I hope to give back to the land that raised me
Honor her on Mother’s day
If the Earth laughs in flowers, does she cry in fossil fuels?
For what type of world do we wish for our children to inherit?
Dear human, dear earth,
I hope with each day one more person may realize our blindness, our mistakes, our impact
And choose to step forward
Into change
Into action
Into hope
So that we may one day look around and realize
The worst is behind us
The earth is healing
The future ahead is bright
And green
And beautiful
To the sea-glass blue in her eye, her passing clouds & the rain’ everywhere I go’ I promise to love.
Here we stand
In an age we have named
Knowing so much
Yet acting on so little
Impressive, isn’t it?
Of the cosmos and time we can tell
Lecture for hours on hours
On the skeletons beneath our feet and in our lungs,
worlds lived and imploded again and again:
First the tiny things, the start of us all
Then the plants, swallowing up the oxygen
then the worms, then eventually an astroid—
None of those cared about money.
And here we are, on the cusp of another
Ending, another beginning
And still we don’t know…
What is to come?
Who is to realize
What we have
How lucky we are
And who is left
To keep trying
Even after it all
At the end of the day we all survive
Dear human, dear earth,
Our fates remain intertwined, yet we resist the changes that must be made to keep us whole.
But we few may influence the great many
And drive back our fate for better tomorrows.
If not now, then when?
If not us, who will?
Right the world
Write our dreams
Make a better day
Make a better future
Call it hope
Call it living
