Imagination

At first
I saw a concrete wall
Brightly painted
With a few cracks
Rain saturated

But on closer inspection
I realized
It was the surface
Of a turquoise planet
Where a river once ran
Along a cerulean canyon
Carved through southern aqua badlands

The vast northern plain
Buckled at the fault lines
As the red giant sun
Slowly vaporized the sky
Its mighty gravity
Churning the planet’s rocky mantle

And I wondered
Whether the people
Of the turquoise planet
Had learned enough
To escape their planet’s fate
And whether they had mastered light
So they could race ahead
Of the image recorded
By an Earthbound telescope
To tell me stories
Of a dying world

Every now and again
I remind myself
See the world
As if through a child’s eyes
To find the beauties
And wild possibilities
Only an innocent imagination
Can create

Then I remind myself
I face challenges
Only an adult imagination
Can resolve
So do we all
So does our world

But it is the child in me
Which stretches my imagination
Beyond what the adult in me
Thinks possible

Such is the value
Of innocence