Four Years Go

    A time for poetry

 

We have the opportunity to influence the course of a river, right now

A river that doesn’t quite yet exist, is just coming into being

 

A new rain is going to fall

   The clouds have been filling for centuries. For eons.

 

The dry earth is parched, the dirt, the hungry soil of human culture does not quite yet know how

   To accept the rain.

 

As it falls on the dry ground  at first will bead up, and not know where to go

      It will seek the lowest level

 

And as it does we have the opportunity to direct it

  Only once, and quickly, deftly, unknowing ourselves but wanting

     And if wise, asking

 

For divine guidance    from ancient spirits   from the souls of the yet unborn

 

  From the earth herself

 

So as the rain begins to fall

   The rain we have asked for can be channeled easily, skillfully

       Gratefully

 

Just as a well-timed scratch in the dirt can create the needed hint of a channel

    Which the rain following will itself carve the channel

        With her own force, her own compassion and hunger

 

So can a handful of human beings, and a constellation of committed yet

    Disparate communities create the indelible suggestion of

       A better earth   a new culture  a compassionate and nurturing economy

 

And on feeling sensing grasping owning and reshaping endlessly authentically new pages of these suggestions and begin to write the books

 

    Of love poems to one another, and pledges of alliance and documents of selfless embracing competent service

 

 And unstop the flow of a thousand a million a hundred billion conversations

      And cries of rage and confessions of surrender

 

                                           To all that is good

 

So can a handful of beings begin to compose the songs

     That in their singing will build a new humanity a new purpose a new possibility for all

 

The songs of the divine  passion of humanity  long bottled up,

      now begin to flood the plains of a corrupted    tired    worn     bankrupt society

 

Nurture the seeds of human kindness, that sprouting can create anew from that which recently seemed hopeless

Rewards the brilliance of human ingenuity when  harnessed to the great winds of service to all-

 

                                       So it is we who can change the world

                                                  If we begin it now

 

Ah-she                                  

                                                      May it be so.

 

 

 

NEXT POEM

 

We want to unleash  a conversation of commitment to a new humanity, to a new now , to a new possibility of a world that works for every one and all living things

       And their children

A commitment that unleashes the work that needs to be done

 

A commitment that is a cry of joy, and maybe too the pain of loss and separation and change, but mostly joy, soon the pain drowned out by joy! A commitment that goes to work. In four years.

 

In four years we have the time

 

We have four years to end the wars on our planet

Four years to beat the swords of those  murdering industries  into plowshares

Four years to engage the plans that will end our carbon-killing of the skies

    Within ten years

Four years to transform our dominant institutions from dominance to cooperation

   Because cooperation will prosper us all, and kill none

Four years to lay the foundation of an economic system

   That restores the vital web of the planet  that is a benefit to all living things and not a tax on them.

Four years to establish an irreducible template for a society that values everyone, and neither oppresses nor neglects any one.

Four years to formulate a culture that sources itself in the vast compassion of the human heart

    Rather than merely accommodating it

Four years to lay the plans that will repair the soils

   Restore the forests  reanimate the seasons

     And refill the oceans with teeming life

Four years to GO!

 

 

And we want to unleash these conversations and inspire their own creation inside a thousand languages

And not just the languages of the many lands, but the languages of the many disparate communities that make up our human family

The languages of the earnest helpers

The languages of the earnest dreamers

The languages of the devout believers in Jesus

And Moses. And allah,  and bhudda    and hare Krishna

The languages of the devout believers in the infallibility of rational thought

The languages of the people that live close to the land    and never left it

   As well as those that were driven away

And the languages of the people that were stolen from their land and never given back

And the languages of the people that had to leave their land, and will return

And the languages of people of the suburbs. The lands of freon and parking and limitless television.

And the languages of the men, and the few women who are acting like them, who propel catastrophic and toxic industry

 

And let these many languages join in one chorus:

    That we are all in this together.

       And that we all win,

          when we all play for each other.

             That we can do this.

                And that we will.

                   And that is no other way.

                      And if there was we wouldn’t have it.

                        And that the time is now.

And we are all the ones that we have been waiting for.

 

                                                                           Mark Bachelder   March 2010