However, your nature is such that it is optional to you whether you remain in your present concept of yourself (a hungry being longing for freedom, health, and security) or chose to become the instrument of your own redemption, imagining yourself as that which you want to be, and thereby satisfying your hunger and redeeming yourself. — Neville Goddard
“Don’t destroy the world.
I’ve only nibbled
the grasses of my lover’s meadow.
We are early May
and clematis has not yet blossomed.
Alyssum, lady’s slipper, buttercups
I want to hold then to her chin as we did childhood summers
shining their yellow reflection.
And the large magnificent trees
rhododendron, splashed pink as dawn
magnolia, white waxy bowls of purple swooning.
I’ve waited my lifetime for this.
Plums are yet to come, fat, taut
the fragile bloom misting their skin like breath
Let there be days of grainy juices
sticky on my face. I
want time. There’s
plush mango I smear over her.
Let me lick the pit clean, memorize
each crevice with my tongue.
Don’t
destroy
the world
because my child’s five, because
she cries when she scrapes her knee on gravel
skin shredded, blood beading through the dust
cries pitifully long
while I envision scenes of devastation:
holding her against my clawing pain
her screams, my helplessness.
“I hope nothing really bad ever happens to you,” I blurt
the accusation, a shield for my own hysteria…
Don’t. Don’t destroy the world.
- Ellen Bass