Desert of Poppies – A Modern #Parable
They say the gods once walked here, barefoot on soft moss, laughter stitched into the breeze. The earth was young then, and so were we — bright-eyed, griefless, still willing to look into one another’s pain without flinching. But mortals often shrink from such tenderness forever. We tire. We turn away.
It did not begin with cruelty.
Cruelty is too sharp, too sudden.
It began, as most endings do, with forgetting. A mother who looked away from a stranger’s hunger.
A ruler who desired chaos over unity. A child who learned that kindness and empathy are weakness. Leaders who shrugged off their responsibilities to chase the wind and burn the trees.
It was easier to let go of the weight of these choices, easier to believe someone else would carry those burdens. So the hearts of men grew still, not with rest, but with refusal. Apathy bloomed colorless and sterile, rootless though it clung to the world like parasite ivy on a crumbling wall.
In sadness, the rivers withdrew. The trees shed their cooling leaves and stood in mute protest. Mountains wept rivers of mud and stone, and the frozen wastes melted beneath the scorched skies. In the hush that followed, where no prayers rose and no comfort was offered, poppies began to appear.
Unplanted, but sown from grief and indifference, they rose from the earth like living wounds. Red to match the blood of millions. Pale as neglected need. Mute as words unheard and ignored.
For every kindness withheld, a poppy reared its head. For every mercy canceled, ten more. For each intentional act of intolerance and malice, a thousand more until they covered the land in a desert of grief, a wasteland of forgetfulness blossoming with the desolation of indifference.
And still, we called it beautiful.
We walked among the poppies, marveling at the color, never naming what they cost.
We praised the blooms, and forgot the burials.
~ Morgan C. Morgan
Writer of light, shadow, and the stories between.
Further Reading:
Further reading:
The Grownups Are Preparing for Climate Change
But the politicians aren’t by George Dillard
When Climate Change Meets Atlantic Collapse — My Homeland Plunges into Ice Age by Martina H
When Good Intentions Go Toxic: What Urban Wildflowers Are Hiding from Bees by Silvia Pineda-Munoz, PhD
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