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Description
for the potentialities of future generations

i.
This century does not feel
like the golden age of anything.
It feels like the uncertain period between
the glowing white of robotic nurses
and sterile, distant space stations,
or the charred-black shards
of a world of lost civilizations.
This does not feel
like the era of sepia-toned poetry
my parents thought it could be.

ii.
Maybe someday you, the future's promise,
will begin to believe
as I have begun to understand –
God is not a man, a woman, or a god;
God is our name for the best parts of ourselves,
the bigger, brighter, eternal parts
that will not die
smothered by blind traditions.

iii.
If you judge human greatness
by the power of our war-machines
and the size of our killing fields,
we would be nothing more – and something less –
than animals with bigger claws and bigger hunger.
The wildflowers we leave on satiated graves,
those simple, Godly symbols of remembrance,
should be your measure of our sapient
humanity.

Description
for the potentialities of future generations

i.
This century does not feel
like the golden age of anything.
It feels like the uncertain period between
the glowing white of robotic nurses
and sterile, distant space stations,
or the charred-black shards
of a world of lost civilizations.
This does not feel
like the era of sepia-toned poetry
my parents thought it could be.

ii.
Maybe someday you, the future's promise,
will begin to believe
as I have begun to understand –
God is not a man, a woman, or a god;
God is our name for the best parts of ourselves,
the bigger, brighter, eternal parts
that will not die
smothered by blind traditions.

iii.
If you judge human greatness
by the power of our war-machines
and the size of our killing fields,
we would be nothing more – and something less –
than animals with bigger claws and bigger hunger.
The wildflowers we leave on satiated graves,
those simple, Godly symbols of remembrance,
should be your measure of our sapient
humanity.