Thursday, January 30, 2014

The Perfect Poem for Me

You'll see why.

A Hundred Years from Now
by David Shumate

 I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to
see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.
What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know
if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your
children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have
you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your
bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?
A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The
doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a
horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?


"A Hundred Years from Now" by David Shumate from Kimonos in the Closet. © University of Pittsburg Press, 2013.