Getting above themselves, they built a tower – trying to reach the god above the sky – and tumbled into Babel.
So Icarus, maddened with science-power, scorched as he learned to fly.
The same old fable.
Somewhere a tribe tells of a woman who – trying to reach the god above the sky – piled baskets in a heap.
One basket short of heaven, she then withdrew, imprudently, the bottom one to place it on the top.
Always the hubris. Now although we say there isn't any god above the sky our over-reaching's worse.
We build a greenhouse, blast an ozone layer, determined to defy creation's curse.
We bulldoze forests, bid Sahara swell, spin satellites across a godless sky to monitor destruction.
May hope, or fear, or god-within, impel us into action!
Wind of the world, blow through our ozone hole and teach us to make whole.
Anne Ashworth Acknowledgement:‘The Over-Reachers’ was published in The Universalist.
This was one of the poemsAnneAshworth read at her Conference workshop. AnneAshworth’s publications include her poem-sequenceTheVerbTo Be is Everywhere Irregular,(SoF),and her prose-and-poetry treatise,The Oblique Light:poetry and peak experience (Quaker Universalist Group).
Previously published in The Universalist.