Red Octagon Sign

Red Octagon Sign
© Surazeus
2019 03 14

She stops before the red octagon sign 
where four letters in white reveal strange truth, 
shaping features she perceives in the world 
that look like curved river, tall tree, round sun, 
and human face, but wonders what it means, 
four pictures that map the way to the garden 
where she tends fruit trees by the winding river 
while the sun shines warm, giving life to all. 

Walking along cracked road into vast city 
where no one has lived for a hundred years, 
she gazes astonished at rusting cars, 
houses, apartments, office buildings, stores, 
churches, factories, shopping malls, and banks, 
and wonders about the people who built 
enormous structures from bright metal beams, 
then sits alone on river shore and weeps. 

Before she died last month among fruit trees, 
while we were sitting in glowing moonlight, 
my grandmother told me how she was born 
when this bright city was busy with life, 
filled with magical machines that allowed 
people far away to communicate, 
because wizards they called scientists found 
secrets of atoms that compose all bodies. 

In one hundred years they transformed the world 
from farmers with horses in wooden homes 
to computer operators with cars 
in sprawling cities built from steel and glass, 
and everyone held tablets in their hands 
that radiated beams of light through the air, 
who talked to each other across the land 
as they flew metal birds around the world. 

Instead of bringing peace and harmony 
between every nation around the world, 
these magic tablets they could use to talk 
caused fierce conflict between opposing groups, 
so people in gangs fought to control truth, 
competing to narrate how all things work, 
but they destroyed each other in great war, 
killing everyone over right to live. 

Walking into large store filled with cobwebs, 
she holds small eye phone gleaming in her hand 
where she sees her face reflected in glass, 
so she takes it back to garden of trees 
far outside town on the curved river shore, 
and places it on shrine inside her cave 
where it gleams dark and silent in moonlight 
while she brews juice and sings forgotten tunes.