Just the One Thing (pick an audience)

Just the One Thing

I know it seems impossible,
and that is how
they want it to seem.

I know it seems hopeless,
and who has spoons to spare
for hopeless things, so I understand

if you hoard your minutes
and guard your caring,
clutch them like cards
against your careful chest.

I see your fear.
I see your guilt.
I see your fear and guilt and 
raise you love. 

I know it seems impossible,
the powers that be are
too entrenched—
that belief
is so entrenched
we overlook its power.
It drones in our heads. It
breaks the earth apart.
It keeps us busy
with a thousand nothings 
when all that’s needed
is just the one thing—

to be a drop 
in the tidal transformation
for which our child hearts
are screaming. 

When enough of us wake
from our white noise slumber
into bodies that love
more than they fear, 
to ears that hold 
the screaming of children,
the ones inside us and the
ones who crouch
bleeding and hungry
against the ground
that yields to our spades
and deals us
daffodils,

then we will band together
like children, before
they learn to hate.
We will dream the impossible
like children, before
they learn despair.
We will shout and sing
in our outside voices. We will
color past every picture
in shades so bold
the lines disappear. We will
break the rules of
rigged games and
make the world
new. 

But first,
I must be a drop,
and you must be a drop.

Every bead of water pulls beads of water.
This is how a wave is built. 

This
is how
we do
the impossible. 

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash

My Process

The process of writing this poem felt different to me than it usually does. I knew there was something I wanted to shout from the rooftops because I’m lucky enough to live in a place where the rooftops haven’t been bombed. But what I most wanted to shout wasn’t about anger or horror or despair, it wasn’t even “cease fire now,” though those are important words and I’m saying them, too. What I wanted and needed to shout most was all about love. I keep wondering, what if we collectively confront the current atrocities with love?

I have a daily ritual of calling my senators and congressperson. I take off my shoes and the compression socks I wear to mitigate POTS, and I step outside into the grass and feel the support off the earth and imagine love rising up through my feet, and then I try to persuade Mitch McConnell to care about humans. I don’t think I’ve succeeded yet, but rather than feeling drained by my repeated attempts, I feel nourished by the love flowing up from the earth and healed by those moments of speaking truth.

This poem was born of the desire to speak my truth for a different audience, though—an audience that does care about humans (a lot!) but feels helpless and paralyzed in the face of all that is wrong in the world. Sometimes I belong to that group. So this poem was for past versions of myself and for current versions of people I love. I imagined the faces of friends as I wrote this poem.

And speaking of friends, thank you to the three lovely humans (you know who you are) who gave me feedback on this poem before I posted it here. The spaces in which your feedback aligned helped me to make this poem better than it was, and the spaces in which your feedback contradicted one another reminded me that it’s okay for a poet to just go with what she likes. Ultimately, we each have to defer to our own sense of beauty and truth.

The Prompt

Pick an audience. Make this audience so small and specific that you can see their faces, holding them all at once within your mental field of vision. You might just settle on a single person (or other being).

Can you see them in your mind right now? What do you want to tell them? What is it you want them to know or feel or understand or receive? Offer it to them in the form of a poem.

You never need to give them this poem, so let your mind lay down its filters, let your heart speak its truth. I look forward to reading your poems in the comments thread! Thank you all for the generosity, cleverness, kindness, and creativity that you bring to this space.