In praise of somehow surviving

Good job on surviving another week, another day, another morning. This poem and the fresh sunlight is your reward.

I speak to a mentor on the phone

he is thirty years older than me

and tells me he is afraid

that he does not want

to watch the human race die

that he is sorry I might have to

that a span of three decades

has made all the difference

in the worlds we grew up in

in the worlds we will die in too

I believe he is right

and I have long since worried

about what the future may hold

I often look to the past

for some answer to tomorrow

or at least some ease for today

75,000 years ago

because of some

volcanic eruption

it is thought that

the population of humans

dwindled down to

between 3,000 and 10,000

that is who we all come from

a group the size of a small town

somehow though we survived

somehow our ancestors

so many generations back

made it through

from almost nothing at all

perhaps we will be back there, almost gone

perhaps we will falter to near failure again

this time thanks to our own error

perhaps we will shrink in size

until we almost don’t exist

but I hope we can survive

I hope that when the future generations look back

they can see that things seemed hopeless

but that there were some

who thought there might be a chance

to make things right

to live in harmony again

to rebuild

maybe it will take

another 75,000 years

to get there

and so many will die before that

but hopefully not all of us

and tonight

at my desk

trying to write a poem

about how to bring in

the grit of our ancestors

about how I hope we can survive

I fly came into the room

and would not cease it’s buzzing

I tried to catch it for an hour

and never could

though perhaps it’s purpose

was not to be caught

but to help me finish the poem

if something so small as this

a speck of noise and life

in the face of something else so looming and large

can somehow survive

perhaps so too can we

Alexander

This week beyond the paywall, a brief discussion of human history and what we can possibly learn from ourselves.