A Cartographer from the Future

Continents: we're down to that.
Ah, different lines in other times.

For centuries, our history
sat well within division's grid.

But, travel back: Pangaea stretched
around this globe, then broken up

as plate tectonics ran their course,
their cracks creating unnamed lands.

What's curious, beyond the maps,
the temporary stakes and claims:

those things that change so naturally,
without invasions or controls

but steady motions from the whole,
to elsewhere, as our epochs note.

The day that asteroid came down,
we were Earthlings, finally

- regional in blood and tongue,
culturally rich, diverse, yet one,

turned borderless in nature's rages
(as nature's fit to turn her pages),

rehumanized, unbound by past.
And that's how we did come to last

ahead of us, some thousands years:
new planetary pioneers

combining every word and power
to rise up from our frailest hour,

reunified to brave the worst,
some compatriots, but humans first.




A Cartographer from the Future © Copyright 2021, Robert J. Tiess.

View this poem at AllPoetry.com

Challenge prompt link: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2723531-Whatever-happened-to-cosmopolitanism-
Submitted: May 1, 2019









AllPoetry.com             ArtOfInterpretation.com