Poetry Prose and Other Words
by Ken Ingham
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Never to Late to Intervene
At a stream of consciousness workshop,student D’vora shares a vivid dream.
She’s on a spiritual retreat.
The group conspires to kill
one of their own who doesn’t fit in.
D’vora, feeling helpless, silently withdraws
to the safety of her upstairs room,
then hears the shot on cue.
Only then she knew.
Should have said something,
should have intervened.
Woke up feeling guilty.
Teacher McNarley is Irish, reflecting
on the great potato famine,
how history affects us,
determines what we are.
Young D’vora is Jewish,
reflecting on the holocaust.
How many lived through that one,
retreating to an upstairs room,
to realize in retrospect
how they might have intervened
when first they sensed insanity in their midst?
How many young Germans still suffer guilt
because of what their ancestors did,
or did’nt?
I also feel guilty,
for what my ancestors did,
to slaves, to native people.
How could anyone have been so crude?
Had I been the son of a plantation owner,
would I have condoned the whipping?
Had I been the son of a pioneer,
would I have joined in the slaughter
of Indians, buffalo, passenger pigeons?
There is nothing in my genes to prevent it.
I am what I am, only because of history.
And what do I see from my upstairs room?
Which current atrocities will shape
the guilt of future generations
if I fail to intervene?
Ethnicism and racism still abound.
But speciesism is the modern scourge.
New extinctions every day.
Imagine, future generations
in their upstairs rooms,
reading these nature poems,
viewing these National Geographic Specials,
gazing out their windows and wondering:
how could my people have done such a thing?