Alone on a hill
a young boy stood
deep in the Appalachians
looking out
at the lakes and valleys below
the land his father and grandfather
roamed to fish and hunt.
They were gone now
and all that remained
were their dreams and stories.
The simple life, the good life
of the poor folk and their kin
soon to be a memory
kept only by the stones
that might survive.
Across the ocean
it was coming without a sound
carried by the sad wind
and the dark rain.
He could hear the echoes.
In a far off city
in a dim room lit only by flickers of neon
a woman dreamt of the babe
that would never leave her womb.
Too late she waited, too long to say yes
and now that life would never be.
The sunlight had been gone for weeks
covered by the somber grey dust
left to blanket the earth.
We all knew it would come one day.
Yet, we continued to live as enemies
stealing each other's land and food
wiping the sky with dead promises
building the Tower of Babel
once again without a ladder to climb
killing for the right God to worship~
while the Only One wept.
We grew tired of trying
tired of the machines and computers
we'd built to make life easy.
Now they laughed at us
with garbled voices
closing down to punish us
for handing them the burden,
holding our children for ransom
our children . . .
who couldn't live without them anymore.
And when all the lights went out
and it was finished
the earth was silent
dark and silent
no green fields, no sunlight
just the lonely stones
that still remained
still remembered
the sounds of the creature called man
who once had walked the earth.
Joanne Cucinello 2008
