Moving between years is oceanic,
shuffling of consequences from reef to reef,
building a math without numbers,
a hope for survival that feels like certainty.
While winter branches split the weather
into ribbons of past and future,
our presence becomes like prayer.
We ask eternity to show itself
without breaking what we know;
we furnish fragile names
like vehicles for healing;
we pry open safe harbors
that cannot know the dangers they displace
but must know most importantly
how to hold them back with slow, still water.
What’s next is not verifiably different or distinct,
or without the plumb and ache
of canyon-deep losses.
What we know is that
there is a chance for everything to shift,
and for our hands and minds to steer the shifting,
and for the adventure of a world built fresh
to warm in our hearts and thrive.
It is that close-held chance,
the slow-moving hard-won shifting,
and how we might make the world anew,
that we see in each other’s eyes, and celebrate.
The Poet Economist 