Page 16 - Packing for the Apocalypse

ESSENTIALS POEM 7
What do you need, really? That can fit in a suitcase Or duffel, or backpack or Go Bag? What do you tell Yourself that you can’t live without? You can answer This question when you are alone, when you wake, in The middle of the night, and have lost the inner map That tells you where home is, whether you are there.
Dark nights haven’t any roads. Your Go Bags are left On the step, with the cat, wondering where you have Gone. This is no time for wandering. The smoke is on The hill. The fire is in the heart. The Go is in the blood And the bag is where you put it when you didn’t know What you were doing because the world and your life Were spinning. Everyone is spinning. Emergencies are Like that. Have you no ground? No connection made? No pact with God or some protective Being? How can You live like this? Weightless. Free-floating. Unhinged And ungrounded. There must be something to be for, To hope for, in all this disarray. Something conclusive. A wrap up. People don’t just disappear. Do they? Into The storm, with dust and roaring. I feel incapacitated.
You say you, too, can barely get through the day. Well There’s a pair of us. Along with all the rest in this hard Time where not a living soul knows what to do. Pause. Listen. The little voice that says: Remember. Just that.
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