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Once upon a time
there lived a blue world full of nattering apelings.

They spent their time shrieking at screens
and turning trees into black smoke
and turning whales into coins
and digging holes in the planet
and figuring out how to kill millions of each other at a time.

They’d spend all day yipping and yammering
about who owned what things,
about whose things were the best things,
about whose thoughts were the best thoughts,
and then when they were alone at night
they’d sit quietly under flickering electric lights
and wish that everything was dead.

And then, one day,
in the midst of the whooping and the howling,
the burning and the bulldozing,
the hating and the hurting,
life finally got a word in edgewise.

“EXCUSE ME,” life said,
from underneath the arguments,
from behind their insecurities,
from the spaces in their DNA strands,
from the depths of their being,
from their heart of hearts.

And the apelings stopped and stared,
every last one of them,
and they saw it all for the very first time.

They stared at each other,
at their flesh and their hair
and their eyes and their hands
as billions of tears 
streamed down billions of faces.

They stared at the world,
at the birds and the trees,
at the sky and the dirt,
at the oceans and mountains,
and they all fell to their knees.

They opened their mouths to talk about what happened,
and nothing came out but poems and love songs.
They tried to remember their old illusions,
but it kept giving them fits of laughter.

They wept and they hugged,
and they helped each other up,
and from then on they walked gently upon the earth
as though caressing a dear lover.

Life is made of miracles,
and brimming with thunderous beauty.
The scales fall from our eyes,
and the callouses from our hearts,
and our war with our world ends forever
when we let life get a word in edgewise.

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