Abandoning Hope, Yet Dreaming Still

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We have never felt 

so far from peace,

yet, somewhere up ahead,

perhaps on the other side

of cataclysm, calamity

and immense suffering,

I dream of a new world,

shining and green,

dotted with buffalo, and trees,

and peaceful folk

who have learned how to live

with respect for the land 

and its creatures.

In those times,

whales will no longer starve.

The living waters will 

run clean once more,

and wolves and bears will

once again have forests

in which to live.

It is sad to abandon

my long-held hope

that humanity would awaken

from the nightmare

willingly, and in time.

I resign myself that it seems 

we will only awaken

in response to the direst of events.

We stayed asleep too long.

We are alive in the times

the ancestors spoke of.

I wait for the Shambhala warriors

to stride through the halls of power

with clear eyes, their weapons only

compassion and insight,

to lead us in 

a kinder, better way.

Some day, I dream,

there will be

the thousand years of peace

we have been promised.

Not in my time, and not in yours,

but I hold that vision in my heart, 

to comfort me through these times

when it seems

the whole wide world

has finally gone mad.

For Susan’s prompt at Midweek Motif: Peace. I have written so many poems about peace. This year, with things this bad, resignation has replaced my lifelong hope.  Yet I believe in the prophesies of the First Nations ancestors. It seems, now, given the right-wing, corporate-funded "leadership" in many countries, that we will not make the conscious shift we need in time, but only after passing through terrible times of unthinkable hardship, in response to cataclysmic events. But Mother Earth will heal. One day she will begin again.