I knew You once.
I knew you once.
I knew your lushness that lured wild hearts into unknown and unexplored depths.
Wild hearts seeking solace.
Wild hearts longing to escape their reality while marveling at your grandeur.
Wild hearts waning,
Wandering,
yet fervent in their exploration of you.
I knew your rolling summits that sprawled miles boundlessly.
That boastfully publicized their worth with pithy stateliness.
Every curve and crevice encapsulating and enshrining each molecule of value.
I knew the weight of the air around you.
Light with the freshness of possibility,
Yet laden with clouds composed of densely charged particles of potential.
Unexpected lightening bolts of your charisma always threatening to manifest.
Whispering and mighty winds of dreams, thoughts and perspectives stirring about.
I knew you deeply and intimately.
I understood the meaning of the variances in your hues.
How the light pinks, oranges and yellows of your morning sky revealed the vibrancy of your hopefulness, and how the smoldering greys and midnight blues displayed your brooding despair.
How brilliant, bright greens exhibited your prowess, your vitality, and untapped potency.
How brittle browns exposed just how much you let others pull from your purpose until you remained parched and depleted.
I understood the breadth and expansiveness of your terrain.
How it was patterned with sweeping and winding paths of unpredictability.
To beckon the adventurous soul to gamble with the possibility of getting lost while discovering and uncovering you.
Daring the courageous to earn medals of bravery for achieving the feat of climbing your surprisingly treacherous foothills.
You so closely resembled me.
All natural
Untarnished.
Untamed.
And now here you are heavy with the strife of humanity.
You can barely recognize the streams of beings that passed by, around and through you.
Your rivers of living water have been muddled and murky with the stains of sins of others.
Your looming trees of life distressed by etchings and brandings of human conquest.
Can you see through the smog that hovers all around you?
Can you breath in spite of the thickness of the air saturated with soot and sated with anger?
Do you recognize yourself or are you lost like me within the whirlwinds of chaos?
I wanted to warn you.
In fact, I thought I did.
I thought the screams that bellowed from my summits
that the welling of my tears that rose and crashed violently at your shores
that the unshakable chills that cradled you for far longer than they used to
that the erratic rising and falling of my temperature
that the blazing infernos that caught one another and spread like tumbleweeds across plains
that the... that it all would be enough.
But you couldn't hear me in it.
You couldn't feel the shaking of my deep belly groans.
Oh how I wish you could hear me.
And now, I fear that even if I croaked out another whispering plea,
It would still be too late.
So now the words that compose this tale of time read, "I knew you once,"
Sweet girl.
Though I wish my presence could withstand the ills that have been afflicted upon it,
my dignity has been tattered and the shreds that remain will waste away far before I'd have the pleasure of watching you grow old.