Broken shards of our distant dreams of Peace and Love, and Brotherhood have been claimed by the Overlords to woo us with our own slogans. Those dreams are now their scythes. We don’t even feel the razor’s edge. After all, we lit the Freedom Fuse, which comes back now to burn us. 

We measure our days by the pills they tender. By the laundry, the groceries, the dollars we spend. By the toll the falling barometer takes, waking up with a new set of aches. The sun rises, the sun sets, and the weeks roll by. Without stepping outside to check out the sky, we tell the weather by consulting our smartphone. The mind is difficult to open, but impossible to close again, for there are then fractures where thoughts seep through. Even from a distance, thin light leaks, stray rays of color belie the occasional effulgence of understanding.

Given time and enough to spare, each stone shall fall and every lone grain be raised anew. Time enough to suss the Sage from the Fool: let the wine spill. Laugh, and clutch at the rain. Such exquisite hunger must and will find its fill; this life’s broad table surely provides the fare. We surely shall be able, you and I, to draw from the bottom that one couched Ace, shan’t we? One final card, to lay guileless before the Grand Croupier. Enough to snatch our proverbial fat from that last and most incessant final trial by fire. Enough! Draw deeply, and pass that skin.

Mirror reflections caught by the eye, the tension of a held breath, the relief of release. Melancholy, yes, but not necessarily sad, a knowing half-grin. With some small dread, I step haltingly away from all I once had toward that which now remains for me. Momentum has buoyed my life along, caught bobbing in the inexorable flow. The respite of eddies, the river’s song, the rush and fall, the slow bubble-line. Colors and songs from along my path: it is not from longingly looking back that these mirror reflections catch my eye. The slippage of the days, the long lilting sigh of old rose silk lifted on a soft summer breeze.

Our heartfelt cries reverberate in the old Boss’s new campaigns, coaxing votes from new immigrants, promising whatever we thought we’d personally gained. And all that environmental hoopla – the poor fish, the birds, even the snails – it was all just a Grand Distraction to keep our Moral Selves occupied. We’re to apologize for our greatness and slide so quietly into obscurity.

When we’ve said enough and done everything we can, enough will remain left unsaid and undone, enough to remove from us the notion of accomplishment. We’ll mow the grass and for a short while all will be level and clean, and even as we watch, admiring our labors, the natural chaos of growth causes us to pause in wonder at the pace toward Tomorrow.

About the author: Michael offers that he is entering the literary publication field in his seventh decade, and this qualifies himself as one of those ‘various marginalized identities’. It is disquieting, how often he feels the push-back of ageism. Oh, well - he is happy in his skin. His career has spanned field botanist, environmental health specialist, green energy developer and resource recovery web site editor. He is shifting from the scientific and technical environmental fields to placing my cache of creative writing; He has now had 60 poems and short stories published; his novel and chapbook collections still seek homes. Given persistence and time…