A long time ago there was a place called
The Land of Milk and Honey.

It was the kind of place that steals your breath, 
Violet mountains touched halcyon sky,
Hives built by bees dripped, sticky with gold,
Sparrows and little things scurried fast underfoot.

Wise spotted owls hid in nooks of old trees,
And from their high perches, they oft overlooked,
Great amber oceans, of rolling grass waves,
Where little beasts sipped thirstily of nourishing milk.

And it was not a place that was empty of wisdom,
For among the tall and waving wheat-grass,
There walked a great many, weather-hardy peoples,
Who kept their ears quite close to the ground.

But soon there came a new group of dreamers,
The expanse they traversed, huddled closely together,
As they fled the low rungs of a post-iron ORDER,
That they had paid dearly of blood to escape.

The newcomers rightly had their breath stolen by,
The bounty of life, as they took from it well,
With every new road, an appetite grew,
To build towers as grand as the red woods they felled.

Those new people had families, who had families again,
Children climbed into wagons to build farms and tend flocks,
And wherever they went, sprung up fences and bridges,
That likewise connected and splintered the land.

And over time there emerged two kinds of people,
The first kind looked back to the ORDER they’d fled, 
And thought perhaps it was not such a bad thing... 
and they began to write a new ORDER, again.

Down at the bottom, low enough to ignore,
Would be everything small: bees, grass, and bugs,
Above them were beasts, at least the ones proven useful,
And the ORDER, it seemed, there could have been done.

But even among people, they said, an ORDER must be,
So they drew made-up lines on our dirt and our skin,
Until no two siblings stood elbow to elbow,
There was only one axis: above and below.

And what lies below you, they said, is there to be used,
And what looms above, well, that must be feared,
And so, to be happy, you’d better start climbing,
For every rung that you rise, another’s descends.

And atop of the ORDER of people are kings,
And above kings, they proclaim, dwells no one but God. 
But a truth that, quite sadly, to them has proved useful,
Is that when God speaks, their voice renders subtle.

It can only be heard if one listens close,
To the creaking oak branches and rustling leaves,
To the laughs of the children who play in the water;
And the chirps of the sparrows that nest in the eaves.

But as times became hard, those sounds had gone quiet,
So quiet, in fact, they were drowned out by clamor,
From the pale-faced men, sitting high atop towers, saying,
“If you cannot hear God, Aren’t We next in the ORDER?”

But remember, the second kind of people out there,
Those who found the concept of ORDER quite foul, 
They found more joy playing, creating and peering,
Into bright eyes dancing close to the ground.

And, for a time, those two kinds of peoples,
Those who liked ORDER and those who did not,
Lived next to each other, shared meals and as neighbors,
Together they weathered the times, good and hard.

But as commons decayed, their pathways diverged, 
The threads that comprised their shared-weave frayed thin,
The chasm between them, In space and in thought,
Had quietly grown far too costly to bridge.

And those who held ORDER too close to their hearts, 
Grew crueler and crueler to those down below,
They re-invented shackles to bind hands that toiled,
Reaping bountiful produce from the life in the soils.

But the people that danced in the fields outside ORDER,
Saw what had happened, and with love they spoke out,
“Is there not plenty for all, in this beautiful place, 
To live long, happy lives, looking up to the stars?”

“What you are doing right now is not righteous nor wise,
As you hurt those below, you debase yourself too,
Cannot you hear the whispers of God, 
Hiding between the wise birds and the yews?”

But The ones with the ORDER writ deep in their minds;
Looked down from Obsidian towers and cried,
“If you will not join our ORDER, then fine.
Stay right where you are, And we shall divide...”

“You may keep your half, with your dancing and flowers...
And we will have ours, with fences and chains;
Because after all, was it not you that said
It’s the right thing to do, to meet us halfway?”

The Others, they listened, and thought very hard,
They watched the horizon, its forests and waves,
And with humble ears, they listened for God,
And grasping just what they needed, they said:

“No, we won’t let you do that.”