2025

A year of fire and brimstone, 

a reckoning with massacres, starvations, vindictive assaults 

on hopes and dreams.

It’s been disappointing to see infants lose their parents – and grandparents crippled with the pain of grief

in ruins, rubble, and relics of the quiet life they wanted more than anything. 

Blue skies & clean water

blooming flowers and fruiting trees 

fresh streams and songbirds’ lilt

the melody of playgrounds

symphony of toddlers

climbing and seesawing 

as the prayers for peace went on and on.

No resurrection 

nothing rising from the dead

but carrion over Gaza

and wolves in the Donbas,

wildfires breathe, droughts parch, 

as glaciers melt

and natural disasters are too many to remember.  

– The outside world a cesspool.

 

The inside world 

of dampened fire

of dribbling lines

a thirsty year of tablets 

for teeth, 

for a dug out cyst

a year for seventeen syllables

a year for words

a year for causes.

Is there any way back?

Any way out?

Any way beyond?

Is there nothing but now?

A year of finding a second home

among smiles & bowing necks. 

the quiet glances

– the way a swallow flies 

or a heron glides.. 

 

Goodbye to all those wet days

all those days of cloud

all the days of weather

Not knowing is the lane to wisdom 

not knowing’s the adventure 

not knowing’s the way. 

2025 Year of Knowing too well

– and Not Knowing.