If not us...

What if geography overwhelmed

history? Left us with no story

to tell? It would begin

and begin and begin.

The end, if it came,

would be a long time coming

and look like we’d seen it all before.

We wouldn’t decisively know

what we’d seen and the words

for regret would sound little

and late, if we heard them at all.

When the glaciers came,

they’d press down hard,

grinding and gravelling

our stillborn lives and,

if we could see ourselves,

we’d be so much unambitious

dust. It would begin

and begin and begin,

and when the wind picked up

the dust, it would whisper

late summer’s turn to fall,

snow yet to come,

to bury all our undreamed dreams

in mounds where our endless

undanced dances

would begin and begin

and begin

a fruitless drift,

never to arrive at the foot

of the tower,

with the faint image

of god unremarked,

and nothing but ghosts passing by

in a place no one could name.

Never to get to where

history remembers who we are,
where hope is a gift

we must work harder to give.