Children of the Earth

 

We're all dreamers. We don't know who we are.
In a world at war, our hearts freeze; we hide
ourselves away from pain too great to bear.
We dream. We don't remember
that we come from the earth, from sky
and moss and water,
each of us with a dream of life and love
on this beautiful planet of blue and green.
We have forgotten who we are,
how we are meant to live: in this wondrous place,
with care, with inclusion, with concern for others,
even seven generations hence.

We find pockets of peace among the mossy trees.
We wander the shore like lonely exiles
from a place we never knew. We have forgotten
that we are children of the earth, born in
an earthly garden, under a heaven strewn with stars.

Bombs fall, families die in the rubble.
Who will "win" in this medieval torture chamber?
For certain, thousands will lose, have lost, are losing.
What must the land feel  as alien rockets pound
into the earth?

When the rockets grow still and we emerge,
blinking, to see what is left, we'll start again
the endless restoration of our wanton, profligate
destruction. Brick upon brick, we will build more walls,
make more guns, wage more assaults
upon each other and all the other beings who are also
trying to live in a world we humans are destroying
faster every day.

We're all dreamers. But we have forgotten who we are.

The italicized lines are from the Poem "Mother and Child" by Louise Gluck.