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WHAT IF
What if the Gods created the most beautiful planet
and filled it with valleys and mountains and trees
with wildflowers that bloom in Spring
with fishes, and birds and bees.
What if they added waterfalls…and ladybugs…an occasional butterfly
and sunrises and sunsets so colorful they kaleidoscope the sky.
And what if once they were finished the Gods were so elated
with the beauty and magnificence of the planet they created
they decided this beauty needed to be experienced to be felt…and thus
what if the Gods created people to enjoy it…what if the Gods created us.
What if the Gods hoped we’d not only appreciate the love and beauty that surround us
but spread that love and beauty to everyone and everything around us.
What if the Gods never dreamed anything bad would happen
What if the Gods were wrong…
What if the people tainted the beauty the Gods created
What if the people could not get along.
And what if now every time the Gods look down on us
every time they realize their mistake…
their tears fall as rain from the heavens
filling our oceans our rivers…our lakes.
What if the Gods created the most beautiful planet
with but one hope…that we’d enjoy it…
What if the Gods created the most beautiful planet…
and all we did…was destroy it.
The rhyme scheme of this poem
The rhyme scheme of this poem is very artistic, and the catalog of beauty that it presents reminds me of the catalogues of the great epic poems; or of Homer's and Vergil's descriptions of the shields of Achilles and Aeneas, respectively. But, as an individual reader, I am put off by both the polytheistic source of creation, and of the separation of creative omnipotence from predictive (or anticipatory) omniscience. So, despite the poem's beauties, there is, within the poem's cosmology, a privileging of human hubris that can challenge theological omnipotence and omniscience---which, to my limitied perspective, does not make sense. Our local destructive tendencies are limited to our cosmic locality. Humanity is like an unruly, rebellious adolescent living in a huge mansion of many rooms, We can trash our own room, and that is to be expected; it was, perhaps, created with that possibility in mind. Yet, on the cosmic scale, which is also part of that creation, our little rebellion is a minor perturbation only. Alpha Centauri and the Andromeda Galaxy are not in any way affected or threatened by our disruptive tendencies. And, I suspect, that if we are ever able to venture forth from our adolescent playpen, we may find some very severe checks and balances that will put our hubris in its place. I apologize for my verbosity: good poems, and this one is, always compel me to get wordy.
J-Called