Monday, March 23, 2020

stasis, and change



the virus, and life

why are we here?
what purpose calls to us from out of the void?

we came into reality and then into consciousness,
and somehow there is a drive to want our lives to matter
to make a difference for the better,
our challenge is often to seek the better for the other
who is beyond our personal bundle of senses and ego,

love can pull us to a partner,
and who we are at least doubles,
maybe then to children,
and we step into the chain
that reaches back billions of years
and hopes to find a future with which it can link up,

at our best we enlarge ourselves from our own Narcissism 
to other people as being “us,” too,
maybe then to animals,
maybe then to plants,
maybe to all life that webs itself upon the Earth,

to a virus?
experts argue that viruses are not alive,
that they are con men who only exist
by having others’ lives live for them,

I am at an age where the view out the rear-view mirror is far longer
than the view out the windshield of what’s coming up before me

I want to have been more than the virus,
using up the host in its own self-indulgence,
though that view may be unfair to the virus,
who, like death itself, is wedded to who we are,
our very DNA subject to the tweak of a virus,
maybe to help us punctuate equilibrium
and adapt ourselves to how the world changes,

we are not alone on the world,
no matter what we tell ourselves,
how sad that it takes a virus to wake us up,

how sad that it is still up in the air
whether we will wake up soon enough
to save ourselves and the world
from the self-centered excess that drives us so much.

by Henry H. Walker
March 22, ‘20

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