Symbiotic Reciprocity: A Poem by Audrey Priscilla

To celebrate National Poetry Day, Wild Magazine has published its first ever poem by Audrey Priscilla. The poem discusses the link between human and planet health – a healthy planet leads to healthy soil, healthy food and healthy us.

When I exhale: I surrender, And trust that there will be air avail On my next inhale. My cycles of breath remind me that I am Governed by natural laws and Dependent on reciprocity. We respire our environment's expirations Which are synthesised from our own exhalations. Within Nature's circular community, Waste is valued as a resource. We are Nature. She is our home and our essence. When we are aligned to her laws, We thrive. But when we divorce ourselves, We demise. Agriculture reveals our dissonance With Mother Nature. "Our obsession with efficiency has decimated food economies and eroded local resilience."[1] Fixating on the output Rather than the practice. Fixating on short-term productivity Rather than long-term sustainability. Standardising. Homogenising. Disposing. Rather than Regenerating. Diversifying. Conserving. Our hubris is our hamartia. We are desertifying the macrobiome Of life. Within our essence and our home. Our decisions reinforce a lack of change. We reside within a zone of comfort; Constricting it with our grasp. We strive for society's success, Constructed from external worth. Our decisions breed vulnerability and "Compound failure"[2]. We have become a destructive paradox To our nurturing counterpart. Inflicting our ideology onto the complex biology, That is our home and our essence. Our health is inextricably connected to the planet. A breathing soil inspires prana into our body. "Food helps us to repair and regenerate,"[3] Providing a symbiotic reciprocity Rooted in salubriousness. We have an opportunity to Feed ourselves with resilience By nurturing the soil biology. To nourish our home and our essence. Nature provides the love, A kind of maternal protecting warmth, And it is our responsibility to reciprocate. [1] Mann, 2021 [2] Mann, 2021 [3] Kiss the Ground, 2020

About the Author: Audrey Priscilla is an environment enthusiast who has taken a gap year between high school and university. In an unexpected twist of fate, she found herself backpacking through Europe. When she isn’t exploring the rich European culture and history, you could find her writing poetry, hiking in Nature or cooking tasty plant-based food.