Each month, I post one of my best poems exclusively to my poetry patrons in Patreon. Among other benefits (more details here), they get the poem 90 days before I release it to the rest of the world.
Today is blog publication day for my poem, These Times.
When this poem was written, we'd just gone back into severe lockdown here in London and this first poem of this new year tried to capture how I felt about the coronavirus crisis and what it might be trying to say to us.
I hope you enjoy.
These Times
“This too shall pass,”
the ancients said
and so it did
but so too did it stay
within the human race
in memories
and sometimes too
in ways
preserved in the dominions
of law and habit.
And so we’ve come to here,
this surface blur called now,
its depths though
a clear echo.
Listen.
Hear.
Earth and seas
and stars and breeze
still hold out their arms to us
as they send forth
their wake-up calls.
They know what we,
born of their molecules
know too.
Can we plunge into the wound
find the pearl,
the question passed on
up to us.
What can we make
and mend
to make amends?
Today is making us
ready for tomorrow.
We have, now,
what we need
for the whole world
to act as one.
The time is come.
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