A Note to 2023

Climate emergency, COVID, a world seemingly
ever-more calamitously running off the rails.
Hate, brutality, toxic divisiveness proliferating daily.
Hungering, we search out oases of kindness,
caring, kindredness, hope.
We commit to ourselves becoming sources
of these same healing energies.

We feed our aching souls with nature:
trees, green growing beings, the ocean,
the coming and going winged ones.
Reminders all, of the endless cycles
of birth, death, rebirth, of ebb and flow.

Remembering:
even in the desolation of winter’s dark,
forbidding barreness, new growth germinates,
invisible, deep below the surface.
After the deepest darkness,
the light inevitably begins its return.

In these days of desolation,
we move more slowly, our own light
often dimmed by all that surrounds us.
Still, we warm ourselves in loving connection:
with our heart-family, kindred-soul friends,
our four-legged companions. We hold each other close,
do what we can to walk kindness,
caring and compassion back into the world.