Invasion

Invasion

By Valmer Lord

My society is no more.

Fractured and splintered by the relentless march of progress,

and by the intrusion of the other.

There were just pictures.

Harmless entertainment.

An amusing way to while away the tedious hours,

or so we thought.

That alien other that we once recoiled from,

or laughed at, would soon make us alien

From ourselves,

And yet I do not weep though my heart mourns.

What is past is past.

What will be is yet to be discovered.

Here is here

And now is now,

And we think that it will go on forever.

The remote corner of a crumbling empire.

The colonists confused and bewildered

At the rejection of progress

And the embrace of folly,

Or so they thought.

The servants have embraced ideas they are too stupid to understand.

It is a pity. It is a shame.

It almost makes me cry, but not quite.

We could have done so much for them,

But in the end it was all so exhausting,

Perhaps to retrench, to focus on ourselves

For a while.

My society is no more

Death ends a life.

Even a life that was not lived,

Yet woven of the dreams and yearnings

hopes, despair and anguish

Of countless interlocking lives.

We hoped for change,

But when change came

It swept away so much

Except the memories,

And regrets,

And things that were never said.

Valmer Meldine Lord is a 4th Grade English and Social Studies teacher at Dunbar Promise Academy. Valmer joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2016 attending the Invitational Summer Institute.