Long Time Coming

It was while I was running up a hill
(I say running
but you should picture me shuffling
upward so slowly
walking would probably be faster)
the thought came fluttering through
the way those little helicopters
twirl through the air,
unbidden.

Great changes never come
wtihout terrible loss.
Or maybe it was more like:
Big healing never comes
wtihout huge heartbreak.
Whatever the wording, the knowing
was clear as the blue March sky
two days before the spring
equinox --

This was a long time coming,
you could say inevitable even,
and how we move through it
will have everything to do
with what the world after
looks like.

Will we be broken beyond repair
or will we recognize that so much
had to die
if we were to have any chance
of a healthy future?
These questions like tufts
of pollen floating on water
were hardly theoretical.

I've lived them before
as have so many of you
each of us in our own way
familiar with the jarring landscapes
of life upended, what we had come
to expect no longer,
and oh how quickly we adapt
to change so as to survive.

Inside, in a quieter place,
more like a deep cave
protected from conversation
or maybe fed by it like a cold spring,
something else is happening.
A healing, a small bloom
in the dark
opening.