For so long we had prophesized in private,
getting high in bathrobes or crying in bathtubs,
doing anything to cleanse our minds
of what we knew we knew.
Walls fell and were built
and fell and were built again;
apocalypse was advertised every decade — but we called ruse
until the final plague.
An unsettling silence claimed the highways,
punctuated nightly by siren after siren
singing death and detention into our nightmares;
these two choices we were given.
A third option arose, unbeknownst to most: to live
so slowly you were moving backward through time.
On my knees, I tended beans and herbs;
I scrubbed the floors of dirt dragged in;
I crawled, infantile, seeing the
ground up close for the first time.
I curled up in grief and napped on earthen lap.
What if watching the birds really was our ticket out?
What if their calls were not more audible since our droning ceased,
but our sense of sound had in fact sharpened?
I pondered, polemic finally writing itself.
I threw open my doors to greet the spring breeze
and clear my private pandemic
and preach from pulpit not made for screen.
What Midas didn’t know was what Dionysus wouldn’t tell him:
there is such a thing as enough.