What The Future Could Say
a poem for the other side of this ache
I’ve been trying to write the ache I feel. The grief, numbness, nausea, at what our country just voted for. There is so much at stake. And yet, every time I start to write an essay, my words stumble.
But this morning, these lines came to me:
After the collapse
we could finally
breathe
And I thought about future-building. I thought about what might be on the other side of this ache.
Today, I offer this poem and hope that the same energy that brought these words to me takes root as we navigate the years ahead:
What The Future Could Say After the collapse we could finally breathe who knows if it was the wildfire that covered the sky for weeks or the hurricane that carved away mountain towns or the explosion at the big oil headquarters, when executives found themselves on the front lines for a change, that tipped power out of the hands of the few the last straw is always hard to find the pundits that were left kept wringing their hands, looking back to parse right and wrong, but like breath it was always going to be imperceptible. Like air we inhaled the change like wind, it blew off our hats and rolled across imaginations into the future the chaos everyone feared simply settled down once we cleared the air, for even bluster was exhausted Maybe in a thousand years people will study this time and find what happened, a particular tipping point. Maybe by then history will be called ourstory and those who tell it will be called storians I hope that when they reach back into the tangled weave of today they’ll say: look how quickly the air cleared how all of the sudden, waters ran clean and aquifers recharged. Back then people were so encumbered with doing – see what happened when they slowed down, when they stopped burning the bones of dinosaurs, when they stopped breathing all that death I hope they’ll say: Look how quickly it happened, like a waterfall, like a superbloom! Look how they held each other in the transition, like the first days after solstice tender and hopeful, remembering how the light always returns I hope they’ll say: What an ordinary day it was when they let their hope take root. What a spectacular future it grew
This poem is inspired by many people: Those on the retreat in Northern Ireland, where Gareth and others shared the sentiment that the spectacular is made up of many ordinary moments. Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang (those lines about the big oil headquarters). adrienne maree brown, and all the writers and activists engaged in future-building. And my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Acebo, who used to rotate the name of our class from “history” to “herstory” to “ourstory.”
Thanks for a hopeful post in desperate times. Have shared on my Facebook page.
Thanks for writing and sharing this 🙂