Is there a person in your head that you've always wanted to be?
A poet
A scientist
A sports hero?
An adventurer
An architect
An astronaut?
Maybe you'd choose another gender
Another skin color
Another nationality.
If Mother Earth could be different
Would she choose to be reborn without us?
After all, we're relatively new
Hugely expendable.
Not to mention grouchy
Trashy
Feckless
And farty.
Would anchovies choose to be thoroughbreds
And artichokes to be hummingbirds?
Humans are restless creatures, you know.
Migrations are common in our history -
Into ancient Rome, for its economy and jobs
Into Asia and Africa from Europe in the 14th century
Into the lands of the sedentary people in Central Asia
By the pastoral and nomadic.
Did you realize that a mass migration is happening
Right now
In your living room?
We are migrating out of touch-land
Out of physical and carbon-drenched neighborhoods
Onto screens and zooms and online meets.
We are certain we can return.
Rise, like Phoenix,
From the ashes of despair.
But if that day never comes?
What if we have created a garden of hatred that cannot flourish?
A landscape of warfare that can only shrivel?
A virus has now migrated into our cells
Crushed our defenses
Rendered our knowledge warehouses impotent.
Revealed us to be vulnerable, frail,
Like paper dominoes
Wingless eagles
Cowering tigers.
Of course we will overcome
So said Dr. King.
Of course we will return, honkers all, like geese in summer.
Of course our children will socialize as before
Learn as we did
Bring us grandchildren to love.
Of course.
What if those grandchildren
Realize
That we shredded decency, ethics, compassion?
What if they reject us
And all we stood for.
Things we knuckled under to
Ignored
Burned down
Suffocated.
The people we bruised and battered
The failed leaders we idolized
The cries of children we drowned in greed and failing life boats?
The tears of the disavowed, displaced, denigrated and disallowed?
Maybe an alien universe will contact us
Save us from oblivion
Save us from ourselves.
Stephen Hawking was dubious:
"If aliens decided to visit us
Then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas.
That did not turn out well for the Native Americans." (1)
When we finally take off our masks
Will anchovies be thoroughbreds?
Will artichokes look like hummingbirds?
I'm dubious too.
(1)"What Stephen Hawking Predicted".
c. Corinne Whitaker 2020
