When The Moment Comes

Once this has passed

---and it will---

And our sick have recovered

Or have died and been carried away

But we have yet to begin again

With all the games we are intent to play

---both with and against each other---

May we at that time please just…pause

To reflect upon what we have learned from the ordeal of this trial

Which, unfortunately, we have only dreadfully just begun

But at that imminent, existential moment

As we stand between the horror of what has been

And the possibility of what is to be

May we then reflect

That ‘in that dark time our eye began to see’

And that it is now poignantly clear

We are all of this one little world

A mere fleck of a speck of Creation

‘Drifting like a satellite’

Alone in a cold corner of our galaxy

May we understand then

That here on our planet’s thin skin

Living in this delicate lens of oxygen

That we are just One People

Passengers on the same little boat

Floating on the same big sea

And that we all share equally in the same perils

And that we are ultimately undividable by our borders and our religions

And cannot really hide from each other behind our various artifices

And that only unaffected science

And unabashed love

And unbiased reason

---all seasoned with art and dance and poetry and song---

Can save us, heal us, elevate us

And make us whole and fully human

grant peeples 3/15/20