And so today I pick up the undone list.
The garden bed still empty and without seeds,
unwritten poems and unfinished manuscripts,
the laundry still in a pile, the cousin I forgot to
call in his grief. I've ignored the headlines again,
the ones that say twenty children died in yet another
school shooting, and the tenfold of them in hospital
bombings, and the barrage of words fired from the
mouths of politicians. I believed that by now all the
pieces would have fallen into place. That by now,
my life, fragmented and strewn, would have gathered
itself into a neat story. But the forests are burning
and lakes are drying, and biblical floods are gathering
their vengeance at the shorelines of our ignorance.
And still hunger is unsolved. Still cancer dances in
the marrow of our bones. Still the apples I believed
I'd eat rot on my counter – one a week. No, I haven’t
greased my bike wheel yet, nor have I dusted the
bookshelves, not to mention the still disorganized
garage. In class the other day I yelled CUCUMBER,
then replayed the scene till the shame lost its punch.
And still, despite the utter messiness of this being
human, I wake up daily in love with the brilliance
of the world. With its faint glowing possibility,
with this life which holds me like a soft ember
kissed by the wind, ready to flame.