Here at the end,
Here at the end of a poison epoch,
Where we glorify the most alone
And drink cement to quell the grief
Here at the end where cheap social drama
Supplants the full-bellied weeping that is right
For an ending like this,
Here at the end of the endless projects
In a time where people still clutch for time
Life waits, welcoming:
A white light at the end of illusion.
A tear escapes to roll down the cheek,
Water drifted on clouds formed within
The dwindling Amazon.
And maybe the sighs that escape our tight-squeezed lips
In these days of disappearance
Are prayers offered in synchrony with the final
Exhales
Of the last
White rhinos.
Maybe the way I pick at my fingers
Is a prayer too,
For the work these hands came to do,
For the stories they came to weave
With tear-soaked thread.
Maybe the rush we cleave to
Is something akin to a mercy kill -
If this is the way it must be,
(and it must be because it is)
Perhaps the online shopping addiction
And the safari hunting trip
And the way beings capable of love
Fight against facemasks
Are tidings of infinite wisdom,
Helping us finally welcome endings.
Maybe we need that help,
That merciful, insistent hand
Ushering us off the stage at just
The right moment:
The flickering garish display
Raging like a pixelated forest fire,
Clearing life,
eating and ending life,
As an ode to life,
as a hidden angel,
as a compassionate necessity -
Burning it all down because it’s the only way.
And so here we are, maybe-martyrs,
Unwanted incarnations of the end times,
Unwilling firefighters to a lost cause -
Or perhaps,
Perhaps,
We are faithful witnesses to the unavoidable,
Honored in our incarnation to hold vigil -
Old souls chosen and choosing.
Somehow I know
A whispered heretical truth:
A single moment of bare courage
Of loyal communion with the 10,000 things
Redeems 10,000 broken colonial years.
Maybe the weight of our willingness to feel
Is the whole, four billion year point.
Maybe the choice to see the beauty
in a pine cone
closed on the forest floor,
While the dead world dings
From the screens in our pockets
Is the apotheosis of all myth,
The final cosmic test,
And the Loving flame that
Cracks it open,
burning and somehow planting
New seeds.
Maybe, in the end,
we came to say Yes.