God was sitting all alone
on a New York street corner
contritely drinking his last beer,
puffing his last cigarette.

He sat sobbing on the sidewalk
with feeble body, matted hair,
and filthy clothes, looking at
a stained map of the world.

Tears formed in his clouded eyes,
slid down his dirty cheek,
and fell remorsefully, scattering
heavily across the battered map.

They fell evenly, drowning all,
leaving no land free of blame,
covering every corner,
submerging every inch.

He thought of the planet,
the virus that was destroying it:
humans – multiplying, spreading,
consuming, demolishing, like a plague.

His hand slid over the torn map,
his fingers polluted from the touch alone;
he felt greed despite poverty,
he felt feasts while others starved.

Everywhere his hand touched
he felt war, disease, famine,
he felt selfishness and hatred,
he felt the darkness of man's heart.

Anger conquered his body,
pulsing through his veins,
pounding his skull, crushing
throbbing, beating, hammering.

He flung the map blindly before him;
the protective air stalled briefly
as the world flipped wildly downward,
drifting toward the street gutter.

Suddenly a faded scrawl caught his eye –
on the back of the degraded map,
the map with which he had designed man,
he saw a note, a glimmer of hope.

Joy hesitantly warmed his heart
as he snatched the paper and dusted it,
eager to see what lay beneath the grime,
the reminder he had once written to himself:

“Man is a fallible creature,
endowed with the power of reason,
with an unparalleled free will
and a sense of right and wrong.

He can choose to do right,
but is always tempted, taunted,
allured by the evil within;
this is every human –

Man's existence will be a struggle,
but it will be a beautiful struggle,
a meaningful struggle with love
and kindness as weapons in the war.”

A torrent of warmth flooded through his limbs,
squeezing out all traces of sadness and fear
and replacing them with fervor,
a puerile eagerness at man's journey.

He held the frail map securely,
now gazing fondly at the filth,
the filth that represented a powerful battle –
a fight that man would never yield to.

God tucked the map firmly in his pocket,
knowing with certainty that now,
when he ran his fingers over it,
he would not feel loss –

but hope.