"A Tale of Humanity and a Hundred Years"
The wind blows where once dandelions danced Where children learned their first lessons in love and pain With bruised knees and minds entranced Where fear was lost and, despite age, innocence retained
The sparrow flies over where once green ruled Where what was alive found a place to live, And what was dead became whole Where there was much to take and much to give
The music passes by where once there was merry-making And diversity but at the same time unity, With a you and a me and another mingling Where color was nothing deeper than what the eyes see
The man looks on to where there was once divine creation blest, Where there was warm earth instead of gold, No cold steel inside his chest, And we didn’t destroy all that was beautiful and different and bold.
[20171012 Couchsurfing Writers’ Club Bandung]
(Tiny note: I was never much of a sonnet person as I can’t be bothered to measure iambic pentameters and whatnot, and quatrain rhymes are always a mess for me. This piece, though, was indeed initially meant to follow the Shakespearean sonnet form but, as always, I got lost somewhere along the way and ended up with something that isn’t exactly what I planned in the first place. That said, I would also like to share a little bit about how this write-up came to be. As was already mentioned in one of my previous posts, I have started attending my local Couchsurfing Writers’ Club that meet every Thursday evening at a different coffee shop each time (yay for cafe-hopping!). This week’s theme was all about what’s the most important story you would tell if you got to live for over a hundred years. This sad excuse for a poem (personal opinion there) is my answer. I would tell of what changed and what stayed the same, and how we are, all together, responsible for it. I would point out how we destroyed what God blessed us with thinking we were building something more beautiful, both in nature and in ourselves. I would speak of how we shunned beliefs and ideas of others claiming ours are the only ones acceptable. This is a retelling of the story of humanity and a hundred years: what we’ve done and what we’ve become. I wrote this in hopes that we would become more aware of how precious the time given us here on earth is. No matter how we choose to spend it, we all leave a mark.)