I like us humans [a poem]

Photo credit: Avinash Lodhi

Will our progeny shake their digital heads at us?

Our greed. Irrationality.
Cruelty unfathomable.
Innocents ravaged and snuffed out en masse.
Little Zosia.

Her eyes ripped from their sockets
for her captors’ amusement.

Will they cough up digital vomit at the very thought of us?

But perhaps they’ll recall:


Our four-billion-year crucible
of conflict, scarcity, death, starvation,

of searing, relentless trauma.

Children birthed into hell

and orphaned there.

And perhaps too they’ll recall:

Not just glimmers

but fucking supernovae

of compassion, curiosity, courage, cooperation,

self-giving, self-loving.

Seekers after transcendent beauty, mystery, the hidden things.

Restoring sight to the blind, hope to the hopeless.

One foot ever in front of the other.

Not fallen angels.

Not depraved wretches.

Emerging beings.

At first timidly, then with conviction:

Stepping out into the light of what we can become.