How to Sing the End

These times are deeply challenging and I know that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the greed and blindness and pain and death that seems so persistent and unending.

Out of these feelings, this poetry arose. Yet in the end, I do still remember that I am connected to the soul of the earth and the cosmos that was never born and never dies. And though I consent to hold and experience the despair and suffering, I am also blessed with each breath and each scent of blossoms, each cuddle of baby goats and each seed pressed into rich damp soil.

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How do we sing the end
Of this precious
Pulsing planet?
How do we dance this fading
Fragile future?

How do we pray these delusive
Desperate desires???
How do we cry our wounded
Wild weeping?

How do we sing
With trembling chins?

How do we dance
When our knees grow weak?

How do we pray
When all seems lost?

How even do we cry
When tears drown our hearts?

I simply
Do not know.

Maybe…

Our songs are
Screams, growls, howls
Or a deep humming surrender
Like the rumble of earthquakes in the roiling earth.

Our dance is
Writhing, twisting, lurching
Or a bent broken persistence
Like a deep-rooted oak tree in a raging hurricane.

Our prayers are
Embattled, beseeching, imploring
Or a humbled prostration
Like the corpses of the forest after the overwhelming volcano.

And our tears…

We weep and drool
A million billion
hot salt tears
Into the frigid, warming oceans,

Where they are held,
absorbed,
And lifted
into radiant, pregnant, silver clouds.

Like our pulsing
Fragile
Desperate
Wild

Ever-present
Everlasting
Never dying
Soul.

To fall
and rise
again.
Without end.

Amen.

Maybe.