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Poem for the New Year

Happy 2022--let it be filled with good things.

And on that note, I wrote a poem. (After reading Manifesto of Encouragement by Danielle LaPorte)

Even now

 

All is not lost--

even now

your frozen pipes are melting.

Cells in your body are repairing what is broken and injured.

T cells and B cells are working together to keep the bacteria and viruses in balance with the cells that make up what you think of as you.

Macrophages are cleaning up the mess. Thanks for your service.

That cancer cell? Nope. Sorry buster, not today. Natural killer cells. You don’t even pay them.

Certain very bad jokes aren’t being told. The last person to tell them has just died. He didn’t use the internet so the ripples of their passage only exist in the vibrations of rocks.

That thing you did that still makes you cringe? Even now the last person, other than you, who knew about it has just forgotten.

Just yesterday you learned a new thing and at this very moment you remembered what it was.

People who feel that power and wealth are their birthright are aging. Their telomeres are shortening. Not a thing they can do about it. Their children are consuming post apocalyptic fiction in which the brave and the generous survive and communities work together to create a more equitable and exciting world. They are forever changed.

Under the warming Greenland ice sheet, little live things are evolving to take up a niche not before available to them.

The Bay Area is introducing city wide composting to reduce methane pollution from landfills.

A mother Grizzly bear is sleeping and her baby is growing inside her, ready to emerge when it is warm enough.

Ladybugs are hunkering, their shiny red bodies gathered together against the cold, their very slow biological processes preparing for spring.

Somewhere in space forms of life are solving problems we didn’t even know existed.

Somewhere far underground things are happening that are just as complex and mind blowing as what’s going on at the surface and we have no concept of what they are. But they are immensely fascinating.

In the places in between, that we physiologically can’t imagine because three dimensions are all we have, an awareness exists in which all of this is good. 

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