After the Great Illness Passes

--penned two years before the COVID pandemic

There’ll come a time

when we sit together

and take deep breaths again.

There’ll come a time

when we aren’t bracing,

daily,

for the next onslaught.

There’ll come a time,

after the Great Illness passes,

when we remember who we really are.

Until then, don’t turn away.

Enter silence for long swaths of time if you need to.

But, don’t turn away.

Record with your Heart-Eye

for your children’s children

what is happening right now.

Every generation asks:

How did this happen on our watch?

Breathe!

I may be going blind,

and I may not be here to see it unfold,

but I have seen the future.

A Great Reclamation will unfurl.

People will move from room to room

as if moving through a great house.

The Revered Woman will be present.

Her soft-sturdy-groundedness is paramount.

Men of Esteem will play the role of Conscious Man again.

Crossing over each threshold,

acclimating to the Unseen Aether in each place

every home will conjure purification

and the Great Spirit of Grief underneath it all.

Everyone will wash each other’s brow

and whisper:

The fever has broken.