The Landscape

by Christine Redderoth-Roderick
(Southbuy, CT)

It was winter although it looked like spring.
The warmth sprang up in the form of weeds.
There was a wild abandonment to the landscape.
The contradiction was not lost.
Nature, in its haze, whirled in the sky
and settled on the ground below while framing the distant city.
They each had their unique beauty.
The skyscrapers were the imagination of man.
The landscape was the imagination of god.
They were two creative forces competing for attention.
The fact that no one noticed occasionally brought tears to god’s eyes. This we see in the form of rain.
When man first started to compete, god cried so much
the rivers and lakes were formed.
Eventually god realized that man was just
using the talents he had given him
and the tears became less frequent.
Initially man was lauded for his creativity.
The more people liked what he did,
the bigger and more beautiful the buildings became.
The dilemma happened when the very people who gave credit to
these creative forces stop noticing and the city
and the life that surrounded it started to decay.
The consumption of man became the deterioration of
nature and its relationship to god.
No one noticed however,
they just walked by as if neither existed.