What will they think, what will they say
our children, grandchildren, historians
fifty, a hundred years from now, will
they ask elderly survivors, will they go
through the things we left, are leaving,
will they puzzle over the things we said,
the things we did, will they wonder why
this and not that, why that many or this
few, will they struggle long enough to
come up with a useful thesis that can be
supported with real evidence, will they
debate over the conditions and outcomes,
over the real winners and the real losers,
will they be able to file all of this away as
easily as we have filed away other periods
in history, the middle ages, the back plague,
or nearer to home, like slavery, the holocaust,
the trail of tears, the Spanish Flu, our various
wars, will they write this up, gather in lecture
halls, classrooms, concoct whole curriculums
around our time, interdisciplinary of course,
the science, economics, politics, religion and,
of course, the art of the time? What will they
think, what will they say when they look at
our news for today?
…………
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Vox Poetica, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, and in the anthology, Along the Way.