Is It Too Late

The last bomb of the day had fallen. Broken debris and buildings lay strewn on the ground. Never thought the corner of Main St. and Fourth Ave in Los Angeles would be demolished and lying in pieces. The destruction was horrific. I was five years old, and had wandered out to see if I could find food. I found a flower, a daisy, on the ground I approached an older man observing the devastation and offered him my soiled hand holding a withered daisy. When he looked down at my grubby cherubic face, I asked, “Can I have a dollar so my mom and brother can eat, sir?” I guess I looked innocent and asked so honestly, he could not say no. He dug into his pocket and handed me a wrinkled ten dollar bill. I ran to our cardboard box in the alley where we were living. I was overjoyed and crying, I gave my mother the ten dollars. She cried. Startled by my nightmare, I woke up shaking, but I was back in my own bed warm and cozy. My family was safe in our home, everything was OK. I lay back in bed and thought about the displaced, hurt, and maimed people huddling for warmth, sipping a watered down tea with nothing else to eat in the foreign lands we occupy. A question loomed in my mind, was this a premonition of our future, the beginning of our Armageddon? Are we too busy, too selfishly engrossed, to pay attention to the world we put in chaos? Are we too self-involved with ourselves to care for the atrocities we've caused? Are we so involved with our usual life demands, our money, our luxuries that we can't stop to assist the needy, the elderly, the poor or just to show them compassion even in our country? Or do we greedily intuit we’re too late to make amends for our part in destroying the world so why try? there will always be collateral damage and crying only brings us down.