This poem was written in reaction to bad news coming my way after the election of Donald Trump, which had left me feeling disconsolate and distressed over the fate of the country.

                After learning my CLL has returned          

 

Lost in the shuffle of days
the present seems far away, remains
with the breath of trees in the night,
with the cell phone chatterers
speaking the music, the voiceless noise,
an alien, swarming, swelling human sound.
No time for a whippoorwill’s song afloat
on the newly mown meadow of my dream.
No time for the sweet chemical smell of a moonlit pasture
of summers past, or for the silence buried in the light
of a star gone dead for a million years,
still shining. 

For it is time for us to wake up.
It is time, as the poet said,
to “be true to one another,”
to our lovers, to our friends,
to those who hold grievances against us.
Time to be true to ourselves.
For there is comfort in accepting what is,
and letting go of what is not,
in the fact that we are alone
and that we have time
on this third planet from the sun,
to find that peace within ourselves
which passes all understanding.