Somewhere, Always

A poem about how everything falls apart and also keeps going.

Photo by Harry Cunningham on Unsplash

I have such mixed feelings about this poem, and even more mixed feelings about showing it to you. Anyway, here it is.

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NOT THE FIRST TIME


This is not the first time the world has ended.
Always, somewhere, acrid smoke is rising
as the lights sputter out, always somewhere
the poor scream and bleed in the relentless jaws
of the powerful, always a lynch mob 
is swarming around the Other, enraged 
by their untamed voice and terrifying skin.
This is not the first time; always, somewhere,
everything is falling apart. And somewhere, always,
someone is baking bread or brewing tea,
someone helps a neighbor in their garden, while someone else
sits quiet next to a friend who cannot stop weeping
until they can. Somewhere, always, two strangers
are saying Hello and looking in each other’s faces
while they say the next thing; somewhere, always, 
someone is humming a song they like, and someone else
is reading a story to a child who turns the pages,
a story the child knows by heart
and wants to hear again. Always, somewhere, 
the world is ending. Somewhere, always,
the day goes on, the next day comes. It is enough.
It is never enough. It is what there is.

---

[You can listen to an audio version of the poem using the little widget above the photograph. Almost made it to the end with a whole voice. Close enough for jazz.]

Sometimes when I read this poem it reads like a shrug: Oh, well, that’s happening. Other times when I read it I can feel my heart open the way it did while I wrote it: picturing people who are reaching every day for scraps of normality and kindness and comfort in the midst of hardship and chaos; picturing people who hold their experiences of quiet and connection and enough-ness as a prayer for those who need those things and as a reason to keep moving forward toward the action that’s theirs to take. Picturing, to the tiny extent that I can, the long sweep of human history, of perpetual corruption and violence alongside perennial, unstoppable, person-to-person generosity and compassion.

“It is what there is.” I’m really hoping that line doesn’t sound like a shrug. It’s not meant to; it’s meant to say, This is what we’re part of, this is where we live. This is where we get to take our next breath and look around for the choices that are ours to make, and make them.

Anyway, here it is, this poem. I hope I made the right choice to share it with you this week.