Catherine Pierre

Nottingham, United Kingdom

 

I am 46 years old Catherine Pierre, a self published author and former editor in chief and managing editor of English newspapers and I love poetry. 

 

29th December 2020

 

Ode to Methuselah

 

Oh Great Bristle cone Pine

Oldest of trees

Humanity’s Centurion

I beseech thee times three

Tell what you’ve seen of our loves and our laughter

Our wars and disease

An unmitigated disaster

We, the greatest bacteria

 

For centuries you’ve stood

And in times gone by whispered

Knowledge and warnings that kept

The Earth tethered

Was it you Methuselah

In the garden of Eden

And were you there

When Philostratus told of the

Arguing philosophers beneath the Elm

When your cousins foretold?

 

What won’t you tell humanity

Of why we are here

Why we all seek

Why we all want

Though what we seek we don’t really know

Forgotten knowledge 

Lost with the vanities

So we sing, we dance, we love, we laugh,

We kill, we maim

Advanced civilization

Forgotten your means of communication

 

Or is it Great Pine

You deem us unworthy?

As a collective? Yes, maybe

But what of the mom who kisses the bruise

The ones who live to save the trees

The ones with humility

Many still possess their humanity

 

Are we doomed to become the new

Lost civilization

To be studied like the Mayans, the Indus and

Anasazi

Advanced civilizations on par with our own

Of paths to destruction mirroring their own

With greed and gluttony, depravity galore

Take all you can

Don’t worry about your fellow man

Without foundation

The new lost civilization

 

Or is it Methuselah

The wind howls your warning

Like the witches in Macbeth

And Birnam Wood moves?

Did you foretell that this storm was coming

A fork in the road: regain our humanity

Or continue to the end,

To seek only pleasure and be greedy of gain

Consume until it stops the pain.

You’ve seen it all through the centuries

The destruction of human-kind

When humans cease to be kind.