I've been writing poetry since I was a child. I'm working towards getting them into book form. In the meantime, you can read and even receive physical copies of my poems on Patreon. Below is my latest, a poem I wrote during COVID-19 lockdown in spring of 2020. It's a poem from a future timeline, one where humanity has changed the course of our civilization on earth.
seven generations later
we often talk about
how lost you were
my brother calls you fools
my mother laments your greed
father names you weak and ignorant
but grandmother remembers
she remembers how civilization
crushed you under its steady
marching feet
taunting you from birth
that you were only worth
what you could produce
how you were empty, in need of consuming
shelves stocked with exploitation
food grown with pollution
talking heads who forgot they also
had hearts
your time spent toiling for survival
in mines, offices, factories, fields
trapped in a system not of your making
built through its creators' forgetting
of their place in the web
you were gasping for air
as the system crushed your lungs
tied your hands
froze your hearts
we're still surprised
you did it
we're still surprised
that when midnight struck
enough of you remembered
enough of our humanity
in time
no one expected you
would stop in your tracks
turn to face the monster
you had become
and with ringing voices say
“no more ~
this world is done.”
through the cracks you made
at last the light
rushed in
little sister can't imagine how you lived
her tiny brow furrows
trying to imagine
working to survive
crying and dying alone
being shot in the back
eating food you didn't grow
the wealth to heal all the world
in the hands of four hundred men
who didn't yet understand
they could share
she thinks of this
shakes her head and says
“they must have been very unhappy”
before bouncing away
i look to the trees,
silent in their memory.
yes, they reply,
unhappy as you won't ever know
we longed to reach them
yearned to remind them
what they had forgotten
but they shut their ears
and closed their eyes
and hardened their hearts
for five thousand years
so we joined hands and endured
while for generations we prayed
for the redemption
we could not give them ~
no one could.
they had to make their own.
~ k. stellar dutcher
april 2020