If your mind is awakened, you know the struggle we wage against an insidious form of helplessness. You pass a majestic tree and you want to bow before the transcendent will which embodies itself in his sophisticated DNA, already tested for its compatibility with the crickets’ song in his leaves, the squirrel hiding in the armpits of his branches, the fruit he feeds the friendly bear passing by.

 

As a human, you want to bow and assure every species, including our own, that it will be able to continue in its accustomed round. Our children, too. Yes, they should be in school and not fretting about the future.

 

Let me bow also to that river beneath the bridge, to its fish, its plant life. Let me tread carefully into the grasshopper’s realm, the snake’s kingdom, the bees’ airspace. Let me sing the song of seasons, the glory of the rain, the backbone of the frost. Whatever threatens these things threatens the rose of love.

 

But our science threatens them, our science which has made us so rich. We are guilty of desecrating them all at the height of our intellectual triumph.

 

Where are the roses? Our triumphant mind is threatened at its core. We never envisioned the vulnerability we are living today. The idea that it could be too late does not compute, because it forces us out past the ragged edge of silence.

 

My love is threatened. How could this happen? Indifference slunk in undetected beneath the umbrella of the information age. I wear the frock of helplessness. Don’t judge my elegance alone. Don’t judge the vulnerability of a flower by its beauty. It is there, and deeply so. It is a reminder, a cloak to cover the struggle, the sadness.

 

My love is threatened.