I often think of my ancestors and I sometimes wonder, “Did they ever think of me?” I think they did in their own way, doing what they thought would make the lives of those who would come after them better than their own, though I have never found anything directly addressed to their descendants. So here is my missive to my own descendants, meant to be read by them long after I am gone and to inspire me to make their future better with my actions now.
Now I am of air and wishes, no longer flesh,
bones, and blood, but you carry within you
all that I once was. When you sleep, the air of your breath
connects you to all that ever existed, even me.
Listen, do you hear my sighs in the moonlight?
As you gather round the fire’s flames, do you
feel my kisses in the sparks that soar up to heaven?
When you plunge your hands in the black soil
do you know my DNA is there, beneath your fingernails?
Do you ever feel the salt of my ancient tears
in your body water’s flow?
My eyes are closed forever, but when you
rub your eyes at sunrise and stand at the threshold
of your doorway, tell me, what do you see?
Do you spy a billion stars fading, visible only
now that our century’s overbearing night lights have dimmed?
Are a million birds soaring, so many that
sometimes they obscure the sky’s pure lapis lazuli hue?
Are the honeyed bees swarming in trees dripping in gold?
I have to know, do your seas teem with salmon, dolphins,
glowing coral, singing whales?
Have our wastelands grown to old growth forests,
now home to reindeer, cougars, beavers, buffalo, and wolves?
We envisioned our best hopes for you to walk in
imagined lands of peace and plenty where
you would be free to be all you are,
loved always and loving mightily every instant of your lives.
Forgive us if our visions were too small,
If we were too bound by our suffering, our terrors, our limiting ideas
handed to us by our own ancestors.
If your world is not the paradise we hoped for or you need,
reach out across those veils of time and space
so that we may hold your hand and offer you
what wisdom we lacked when alive but know now,
what love we could not give for we did not know your names
but which we tender you in abundance now,
what joy delighted us in the beauty that still remained in our own time
of our fragile and wounded world.
It is your turn now to embrace what we dreamed
and dream so much more for those who come after you,
even knowing that no dream that is majestic, compassionate,
radiant enough to pass to the future can happen in one lifetime.
Our human dreaming is a constant movement,
an ongoing rhythm, spanning generations,
reaching out from time to time to time.
Be kind to us who left you the world we made,
Lovingly if not always perfectly,
And know that you have our blessings always.
