History in the Grass (written circa 1997)

(I wrote this poem so long ago that the events I mention as examples are now overshadowed by many and much more recent horrors. I feel that only increases the significance of the point of the poem)

I found a book lying in the grass down on the farm
by the old house my great-grandfather built.
Searching through the pages of the old book I wonder
did he ever think I'd be reading the same book?
Ironically it is an old high school history textbook
held together merely by chance and threads.
I read through it to discover it stops on Teddy Roosevelt.
This book knows nothing of World War I.
It knows nothing of World War II or Hippies or Watergate.
And when I see how much history has passed
between my great-grandfather's time and my own
I realize how little we know of our futures.
I finally decide that only we decide our own futures.
What we do from day to day,
and from year to year proves my grand theory;
That our history needs to be learned from and lived by
or it is just what is written in old books,
found by chance, or perhaps fate in the grass,
held together merely by chance and threads.