(c) Patricia Isabel Lucido
VALS, 2021
re: Creation
I
Let us make in our image
Let us rejoice and be glad
Let us sing sweet songs, brew fine beer,
And eat until we can no longer
For this is the essence of life
The ecstasy and celebration
"Be fruitful and multiply"
II
Let the earth bring forth creatures
Animals roaring in the wilderness
Let them flood into the seas
And fly over the mountains
Let them roam in the fields
Now empty of our kind
Let them rule over the earth
“Be fruitful and multiply”
For this is our apology
III
Let the waters spawn creatures
The first seeds of our life on earth
The first fish in the world–gasping
Let the sea-blossoms sprout
Bleached pale by our kind
As white as the moon above
The barren home we had dreamt about
IV
And let these creatures be useful
For the future of humanity
The true life here on earth
The proof of an existence, a genesis
The proof of life, of a God
Let them live for our sake
And we will reap them, after everything
Pluck them from the earth and say, this is good
V
And let there be light
To illuminate the empty streets
Desperate for the human touch
Searching for a true connection
Conceived in the new era–our digital, nomadic age
As we are guided by bright, brilliant screens
Digital oracles written in code
Pythia and Delphi made dispensable and renewable
But how can we search for warmth
In their cold, cold light?
VI
Let the earth sprout and bear fruit
Bright forth rapid growth
In the time of our absence
Let these bear the seeds of life
To repair and renew this land
Made as lifeless as it began
A patch of dirt floating in the universe
VII
And let dry land appear
After each flood and storm
As we scramble for imagined warmth
Are hollow and empty
And programmed simply to exist
Shall we wait for them to ask
If theirs is a life worth living?
VIII
Let the waters be gathered
In our small reservoirs
As we prepare for the days to come
Still trapped in these small worlds of ours
And we fill empty spaces with toys, with plants
We seek our own spaces in this isolation
We realize, beyond these walls, we are alone
IX
Let there be an expanse above
And let our roofs reveal this blue sky
Brighter than any rendering, any virtual reality
Let us breathe in all the color it will give
And return to our spaces
Our closed, sacred spaces
To the pale light of digital screens
And adjust the hues, the tones–
“The sky is just the sky
And virtual reality is still reality”
We wonder how we can replicate
X
So let there be light
As it was said in the story of creation
The beginning of the universe somewhere in time
Big Bang–the bright, wonderful explosion
Let there be light, we plead
A light at the end of the tunnel
We plead and worry–we cry
As we turn to our gods behind screens