New World Prophecy

Will God’s Next Creation Be Humanless?
By Bonnie Roberts


The new world
is very old.
I am very old.
I am too old for this
new world,
which is not at all new,
but so old we cannot
remember its face
or how long it has taken
to carve it
to the bone
on which the young
thrive, like puppies
gnawing playfully at a gristle
never having tasted
meat
never having seen a forest
or known the feeling
and taste
of pure water
but I must have been
here when the volcanoes
burst, earth novaes,
and oceans heaved
new continents ashore
when the new world
was renewed
and will be again--
this time when continents,
concretes, and poisons
burn away, corrode, sink--
until the Right Ones
sit on cooled,hard lava
not scrape it
and everything else
away--
perhaps stick insects
and other strong
or hard-shelled things
without territory
and greed
will eat only what they need
and just be
in balance with Earth
and, sad, the young of this very old
world will not be here to see
that actual possibility,
that miracle
of a world without destroyers,
and at night,
the stick insects might beat
their wooden legs together
in quiet praise
as some things green
keep breaking through
the empty places
where all was lost.

Only the Creator will know
the immensity of what has been taken.
Eventually, the memory of mankind
will drift to a cold speck of stardust of Its Infinite Being,
like we remember our parents
when we ourselves are old:

We want them back
though we understand fully
that they are gone forever.
We are old and wise enough
to accept things the way they are

without looking back.


Note:
I see that I have major revisions to make, especially around the center section. "This time" and "perhaps" should connect more clearly and directly, without all the hyphens in between. I'll repair that eventually. I wouldn't send this poem out for publication. I wrote it one night about two years ago after I had heard of some horrible loss for the Earth--maybe someone slaughtering our wolves or Tar Sands ruining pristine lands in Canada. Whatever, it broke my heart. I think we are living among lost people. They have completely forgotten--if they ever knew--where they are.


Image Credit: Microsoft 

Copyright © 2012  Bonnie Roberts — All Rights Reserved