Pentimento: the revealing of a painting that has been covered over by a later painting; early 20th century from Italian, literally ‘repentance.'

Middens, the bones of the past, shore our coasts in mute witness of the cycles of death and decay, birth and regrowth over endless generations.

The shores are lost to reclaimed land, docks, warehouses, concrete.

In their family groups, poets and musicians, artists and writers, scientists and thinkers flourished and continue to, on this island.

The rivers are captured in damns and channels and races; the air is losing its breath, suffocated by chemical emissions.

This land has been cut off before, leaving its peoples dependent on wisely using and conserving its resources.

The forests are mourning their trees, habitat to wildlife, birds, insects and microbial communities

This place of glaciers, fire, sea-water rise; home to magical flora and fauna...

Wildlife is lost to roadkill, culling, 1080; the country lost to asphalt and concrete, mining waste, mono-agriculture, factory farming.

We can flourish again, all species, with diversity, change and evolution...

Repentance? It will fill the mouths and minds of those who are left.

...or we will lose our habitat, our bio-diversity, ourselves and our world in the vortex of time-space collision that is climate change.

By Carol Patterson