I came across this poem many years ago, and it has stuck with me. Our insane world of political and religious partisan vitriol always pulls it from the back of my mind to the fore. It’s as poignant now as the day it was written. (IMHO)…
Message for a Time Capsule
by Philip Appleman
I have to tell you this, whoever you are:
that on one summer morning here, the ocean
pounded in on tumbledown breakers,
a south wind, bustling along the shore,
whipped the froth into little rainbows,
and a reckless gull swept down the beach
as if to fly were everything it needed.
I thought of your hovering saucers,
looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,
so it wouldn’t be lost forever—
that once upon a time we had
meadows here, and astonishing things,
swans and frogs and luna moths
and blue skies that could stagger your heart.
We could have had them still,
and welcomed you to earth, but
we also had the righteous ones
who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.
When you go home to your shining galaxy,
say that what you learned
from this dead and barren place is
to beware the righteous ones.
Philip D. Appleman (8 February 1926 – 11 April 2020) was an American poet and writer. He was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.
CynOp 
3 responses to “Message For A Time Capsule”
Righteous people are often self-righteous instead, but fail to see it. My husband had a bit of this characteristic in his nature, and I told him so a few times, though he didn’t think so.
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I have a broader definition of the ‘righteous’… After reading Eric Hoffer’s ‘The True Believer’ back in the late sixties, I have come to associate the ‘righteous’ with ‘true believers’, those whose ends justify their means… that applies to the fundamentalist religious-right, political, and social-economic partisans of any hue… Those who some would call ‘righteous’, I refere to as sanctimonious. Unfortunately, some of my friends tend in that direction more often than I’m comfortable with… Oh well…; -)
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I guess I’m lucky in that my family and few friends are not self-righteous/sanctimonious. When I was still working, though, I knew a lot of that type. And most claimed to be Christians. Hence, my unfavorable opinion of organized religion, at least in part.
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