What to Hold Onto

 

Lunabella, surveying her future

What do I hold onto,
when nothing is certain any more,
when the news is full of war, suffering,
displaced civilians, starving children, 
wildfires, floods, extreme weather events,
whole towns bombed into rubble,
or falling into the sea.

What do I hold onto,
when icebergs are melting,
coastal towns are flooding,
rainforests are not rainforests any more,
in drought half the year,
and the wild ones are endangered
and disappearing.

What do I hold onto
when we, ourselves, are endangered,
the climate crisis accelerating,
while world leaders are too focused on war
to pay attention.

What do I hold onto
when half a country prefers deranged leadership
to stability and experience, decency and moral values.
When democracy itself may be lost
and human rights we fought whole lifetimes for
are being stripped away.

I once lived serenely, expecting life to continue
much the same way, day after pleasant day, and,
for a time, it did. The change came with a shock
that turned my hopefulness into alarm, then
into disbelief that people with intelligence
could be making such an enormous investment
in a fool's folly.

What I hold onto, with all my heart:
that others feel as I do, who long for
a better world of social and environmental justice;
that Mother Nature is always there, with her
forest trails and seashore, her small creatures and
green growing things every spring; with her
struggle to survive in spite of all we do to her.
I believe in the blue sky, in the earth, in trees,
in the Bigger Story, beyond this horrible chapter
we are living - that one day, this, too, will pass,
at whatever cost to we who are living now,
and those who follow. That one day, humanity
will remember to be kind, respect our connection
to each other and to All That Is. That we will stop
the warring and the division, once we experience 
its full horrors (as we seem to be doing now),
and usher in a thousand years of peace
so humanity and the earth can heal.