On the final day of that troubled year
On the final day of that troubled year,
I swam into the sea, my vision clear.
It is not 2020 we must flee;
for time takes care of itself.
Nor is it a virus we must fight,
For this too will take its leave.
Between divided shores of dead-end beliefs,
A greater horizon beckons upon the sea.
Across her vast expanse wander boundless minds,
conversing, like the waves, in an infinite interplay.
Someday, I wish to be with you in just that way,
No longer reft by reason but allied by our awe.
There are few to tell, on this winter day,
How the cold sea refreshes and renews.
Who else will describe, with four degrees outside:
The sting on the skin that says you’re alive,
The fierce breath that fires your furnace inside?
Most of us will stay cozy and warm,
Securely cradled by our own illusions,
Unaware that our comforts are killing us.
Habits of the body, routines of the mind,
conditioning of the clan:
pandemic pathogens we conveniently ignore.
Let us not remain proud, as one who knows,
upon some promontory, slandering opposite-minded foes.
Insanity has contaminated our unprotected minds;
Within the very citadel of our certitudes,
paranoid confusion has taken its hold.
Look how some stand solitary on one shore,
angry and fearful behind their made-in-China masks.
They have embraced the new normal,
and so reserve their kiss for sanitized lips.
They finger-point free-breathers for homicide,
while a million minks become their genocide.
By someone else’s delusional decree,
they will not even come close to the sea,
but cautiously await the great victory the vaccine must bring.
This sanitary salvation army means well with every life it saves.
On another shore, some other anti-reality reigns:
an evil, master-minded plot to subjugate all living beings.
Here, no masks are worn, but other oaths are sworn,
to resist a totalitarian regime that has already begun.
With no fair trial, they have accused the wealthy and powerful of heinous crimes.
Do they not also mean well, these lightsaber-bearing freedom rebels?
Each narrative holds its share of truth for the taking,
our beliefs are the blueprint for a future in the making.
The virus may cause the loss of another million lives,
as some do fear.
The death of democracy, some prophesize,
may now be near.
Whatever your persuasion be, notice your designation
of the other as the CEO of your woes.
Notice the might of your own moral indignation,
directed against those most obvious of foes.
There is only one way out of this epidemic madness
afflicting every side.
However cold and uncomfortable it may be,
we must let go of our fears and plunge into that boundless sea,
the realm of the unknown, the invisible, the unsearchable depths.
There, we may come to accept that we really do not know
what we thought we knew.
Is not our dogma (both this one and that) just as flawed as the debunked flat-earth faith?
Letting go, and floating upon the flow of life,
we may find our true selves, for the very first time,
stripped of our acquired identity (a mask we always wore).
It is not the howling winds of the world that we must silence, but rather the tempest within our own minds. We have not been called into life to change it, but to participate in its unfathomable wonder.
Each of us has conspired, through our every thought and act, to bring about the world that is. We did so unknowingly, but that does not make it less so.
If we did not so conspire, then somebody else will always be to blame, and someone else after that.
No, the fault-finding chain is itself by nature faulty, and therein lies the key to change,
sitting on our very own doorstep. Be the change you want to see in the world. Look no further than that.
Let us reclaim our individual sovereignty to think, to feel, to converse, to breathe....to be.
Let us allow others the same, starting with those idiots over there.
In these most uncertain of times, let us embark on our hero's journey, free to feel the sting of the cold, to follow our individual compass, to pursue our bliss, to prosper, to know pain, to live long, or perhaps perish prematurely. We have not been called into life in order to conquer death.
Let us then relish every dying moment as our last. So also, let us pay reverence to the fading light of this troubled year, now revolved.
Excerpt from my 2021 book in progress entitled COVIDECODED.