Yesterday: (we forgot the future)

 

 

At 6:00 PM they went

to the edge of the cliff
and threw his body off
into the open sea.

After watching it drift away
then sink, they walked
back to the village and resumed

where they had left off
baking bread, weaving baskets
talking about children.

They never mentioned the man
thrown into the sea again,
did not honor him with dinner,
did not hang icons up
where he had Passed away.

Life went on
as it always had
and the people were
caught up in their
every day existence
as they always were.

The next day at 6:00 AM
a strong wind arose
and blew all the town's wheat harvest
into the air,
down over the cliff
and into the open sea.

The people watched in shock.
"Surely we will all starve to death now",
they thought, "as this
has never happened before".

They watched the wheat
float away And sink
into the depths of the water
against a volcanic rock.
There Fish nibbled on the remains
of a man washed out to sea
yesterday.

Mark David Jordan, 2011