4071 (A Poem)

For this poem, I'm just going to post it here for you to read, before I give any context.

4071

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

So, as you can see, this is not your ordinary, every day poem. It has a meaning, and it's supposed to tell a story. Can you interpret the story?

That's what my class had to do, so I thought I'd let you all do so as well.

I thought about publishing the poem one day, and then the explanation the next day.

My classmates had to go a week without any clarification, so a day should be nothing. :p

But I guess I'll be nice and put it all in one post.

You all probably didn't want to do any homework today anyway. :p

This poem came from another writing prompt in class. I can't remember exactly what the prompt was, but I'm pretty sure we were supposed to write about a period of history from the eyes of someone who lived through it. Sort of looking back on history with the knowledge they had gained. I can't remember if the teacher mentioned writing about the present from the perspective of someone from the future, or if I came up with that on my own, but that is basically what this poem is. It's a bit of a grim future.

For the record, I don't think that the future will be in any way like this, I just enjoy speculative fiction and dystopian futures, so that's what I came up with.

I'll walk you though everything I had in mind when I wrote this, starting with the title. 4071. That confused everyone at first until they really thought about it. One of my teachers first thought it sounded like the model number of a tractor, (She grew up on a farm) or perhaps an address before she read too far into it. The simple answer is that it's the year that the poem is being written from.

I was there when we moved by box,
Long before we moved by light.

This line refers to cars, or some other car-like vehicle, and the "Light," is teleportation.

I was there when we ate to recharge,
Long before we plugged in to recharge.

This basically means that people no longer have to eat, they've cybernetically enhanced their bodies so that they just have to plug into a power source to get more energy.

I was there when we walked on grass,
Long before it was covered with metal.

In my imagined future, most or all of the earth has been covered over with metal. There is no grass left, at least, none where the author lives.

I was there when we had children,
Long before we grew clones in tanks.

This one is pretty self explanatory.

I was there when we looked to the sky,
Long before the shell was installed.

This one confused the heck out of everyone. In this future world, I imagined that humanity had built a shell around the entire earth. The shell keeps things like asteroids and aliens out, but there's not really a sky anymore.

I was there when we had libraries,
Long before cranial downloads.

This basically means that people download information directly to their brains instead of reading.

I was there when animals roamed the earth,
Long before we owned the earth.

This line refers to most animals being extinct. The ones that are left all live in zoos, there are no wild animals anymore.

I was there when the trees began to walk,
Long before we cut them down.

This line also confused everyone. This was another bit of far-out imagining on my part. I was just going to write about humanity cutting down all the trees, but then I had the idea to give it even more of a twist.

I was partially inspired by the Ents in Lord of the Rings, as well as by the Forest of Cheem in Doctor Who, but I imagined that in the far future, earth's trees became a sentient race, with intelligence on par with humans. Then there was a war between the races, and humanity won.

I was there when we were human,
Long before we weren’t.

This line was everyone's favorite part. Just about everyone circled it, or underlined it and wrote that it was brilliant.

Basically the author of the poem no longer views humanity as human anymore. They've added too much to their minds and bodies, and taken too much from the earth. Even himself, as he's lived for hundreds of years, and has been a part of everything. He thinks that humanity has done so much that they've lost the right to be called human.

Yes, this is a rather depressing poem, but I thought it was fun to write. Like I said, I don't think any of this is going to happen, I am far more of an optimist overall when it comes to thinking about the future, but I do like stories where everything is terrible and people have to overcome it.

I didn't write it as such, but in my head I imagine that after the author wrote this poem, it started a movement to restore the earth to the way it used to be. So if it helps, you can imagine with me that it eventually has a happy ending. :)