the future judge of the past

 

a burden from the past

it is 2026,

my father died in 1962,

my father was born in 1905,

his uncles fought in the War Between the States,

only called the Civil War because the North won,

my father was named for an uncle killed in the conflict,

for Daddy, this conflict was not dry facts,

but rather it was personal, recent, an assault on his family,

I hate to leap into that world

and imagine how I would deal with slavery,

maybe not with enslaving others,

but accepting that such a reality

was part of the natural order,

I wonder if people in the future will judge us

for persisting with the use of fossil fuels

and the climate change they inexorably cause,

our species always tends to crave more, never less,

and thus we create a reality

that can deny us even the comfort of needing to be a bit hungry,

we satiate ourselves,

and, in the night, wonder at our unease.

by Henry H. Walker

May 8, ‘26