I am not separate from nature.
Palo Alto, CA
2025, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I walk where history hums beneath pavement,
where soil once held stories.
Now steel hands claw at a sky
too thick with smoke
to remember the taste of stars.
I walk where the Earth
forgot its own name.
But I have not forgotten.
Continents away,
the holy Ganges still flows inside me.
Prakriti croons through my breath,
chants in each heartbeat,
whispers in every bend of my bones.
Nature is not separate.
It is sewn into me.
It is a living memory wrapped in river mist.
Yet this city does not bow.
It builds and it swallows.
I watch vines fight,
see weeds thread through broken sidewalks.
And yet this city suffocates
all our roots beneath concrete blankets.
But what if the city listened?
What if it syncopated its pulse to that of nature?
What if glass and moss clasped hands in prayer and peace?
What if rooftops grew forests?
What if rivers ran unbounded,
with that “liberty and justice for all”?
I dream of resilience
stiched in soil,
of hands planting hope for our future.
I dream of streets pulsing with raw life.
I dream of the balance between purusha and prakriti,
the balance between the eternal witness and the ceaseless creation.
The unpolluted sky calls me home.
The untamed wild opens its arms.
I am not separate from nature.
I am nature.
And I will always return to myself.
Reflection
I approached this poem with a single guiding truth: I am not separate from nature. I wanted to explore the tension between urbanization and the natural world. The inspiration for this poem emerged from the places I walk every day - the city streets where nature fights for existence. I’ve always felt a quiet grief, watching cities swallow green spaces, forcing nature into exile. Amid that grief there is also defiance and hope. This is the message my poem seeks to express. A crucial influence on my writing was my cultural heritage and spiritual connection to nature. I believe nature is not merely a resource; it is sacred, living, and intertwined with our existence. I referenced the Ganges River in my poem because it is more than just a physical body of water. It is revered as the embodiment of purity, life, and renewal. Even though I live continents away from the river itself, it continues to flow within me, connecting me to generations of ancestors who have worshiped it. I also incorporated the philosophical concepts of Purusha and Prakriti to frame the relationship between humanity and nature. Purusha represents consciousness and the eternal witness. Prakriti embodies creation, the dynamic, evolving force of nature. In the poem, I dream of a balance between these two principles: a world where cities are not built to dominate nature but instead learn from its rhythm. True harmony comes when we recognize ourselves as both witness and participant in nature’s cycle. I want my freestyle poetry to remind people that we are not separate from nature, and we never will be. If cities subdue nature, we have the power to amplify its voice. This poem is both a dream and a declaration: we must stop resisting nature. We must move with it, not against it.