This poem was written in response to the climate crisis; an address to politicians, conservationists and individuals alike, to take responsibility for all the life on our suffocating earth before it is too late. This life is OUR life. Our birthright. From the local to the global, the effects today are in our faces. In our eyes, our ears, our noses, our mouths, it pollutes all our senses and permeates our cells in the form of microplastics and pesticidal particles. So many of our local streets and towns are named after the nature that was paved over. In writing this piece I was both imagining times passed and times yet to be, from lament of the losses in living memory, to a future where nothing remains but names evoking long-buried memories and uneasy ghosts that cannot rest as we thunder over their graves. Ferndale. Marlpool. Birchen Coppice. Small Heath. Black Heath. Siskin Way. Linnet Rise. Heronswood Road. Yew Tree Lane. Lichfield. Holly Wood...

As the seas rise, tree-lined shores the world over turn to ghost forests, saline sepulchres stood like sentinels to warn us. In such ways our planet speaks, she cries out, she weeps, she is screaming... All we need is balance - nature/life is all about balance, as are we, in all our apparent complexity, and we have thrown things way off kilter through our deafened, blinded, greed-drenched, over-indulged, unbalanced, unnatural ways. We have moved far away from nature, made a stranger of her, and in so doing we have moved away from our nature, our core nature. This is what I believe a big part of depression and mental ill health stems from today, because to be disconnected from nature is to be disconnected from love of ourselves at our core, which is simply as a life entity, a vessel for life to flow through, to create through, to live and love through, to reach through, to teach through, and now to beseech through...

As consumers we have power. Where we choose to spend our money - our investments - builds companies up or breaks them down. Demand is key.
Let us make new demands.
First and foremost let us demand life on earth, pure and simple.
Let us demand that life may continue freely for our descendants.
Let us demand we are heard, that our 'leaders' stop bleeding us for their own ends whilst denying ours...
That they stop denying that the earth is dying and they are the number one destroyers. Put your greed aside, Boris and co, drop your unnecessary desires for shockingly hypocritical aerospace displays tearing up the skies over your G7 meetings of billionaire p!sstakers...
Let us demand that the all-powerful, unanswerable, corporate giant polluters be accountable, that businesses be transparent in their actions, that we may choose to invest in a green and pleasant future, not a grey and choking one.
Let us demand human connection, environmental protection, and the simple right to the joy of life on earth, today and tomorrow.

Words by Mari Randle
Filmed and edited by Antonio Meitin
Soundtrack composed by Kevyn Gammond
Recorded and engineered by Jack Humphries
Accompanying artwork by Mari Randle and Hetty Randle

This video was created for the 'Art For Planet Earth' exhibition, as part of my ongoing work with MAS Lab at Kidderminster College - www.maslab.co.uk - in conjunction with Wyre Forest Green Alliance (WFGA). This work aims to build awareness and inspire action leading up to the October/November 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, because it is time to recognise we are facing a climate emergency.

The fact that much of this is of our own making can be positive in potential, because it at least means we have a chance of redressing the balance where we have contributed to upsetting it. What is of our hands is therefore in our hands and within our power.