You, agents of conquest                

Call yourselves adventurers, pioneers, whatever

But why dub me virgin wilderness

From the Arctic to the Everglades,

I was loved long before.  

They, my master gardeners

Spiry roots deeper than you can imagine  

Cloaked me in luxuriate verdant valley

Trim meadows and fragrant groves

Alas, distant faded memory.     

You, not my keepers   

Manifest legacy of extinct species, cut forest

Of dammed canyons, gone wetlands

Climatic chaos and sacrifice zones

Turbulent land full of stains.

Yet, not ready for my eulogy

Bring back the weavers to care for me again

With healing songs and old tested ways

Revive ceded ancestral home  

Let future be written in the present.