The Death of Kingdoms, A Poem for the In-Between

The Kingdom of ordinary time has left us.

Leaving us in this
in between world.

Things aren’t as they were,
yet, they aren’t
as they will be, either.

We sit here and wait
grasping at the way it was
in our darker moments;
willing it to return.

Willing the sedation of ordinary time
to ease the anxiety of this unknown.

Death is coming.
We know.

How we will face her,
and what will rise from her ashes,
is what is we don’t.

This is always the case with death.
She is always coming.
She always is, where life is.

What is the death that is here, now, then?
That is the question.

Is it death of our freedoms?
Is it death of our heath?
Is it death of those we love?
Or is it death of the destructive systems that have been suffocating us, and the Earth?

Do we get to choose?
Do we want to?

Death always feels the same,
no matter how it looks;
no matter what greater truth it serves.

Still, to me, and my hopeful heart,
the kind of death we are in matters;
as does the kind of phoenix that will return.

And so, I sit here,
wet-eyed and wild-hearted
in the 3 a.m. light of the moon.
I ask her: Do I get to choose?

Yes, she whispers back,
but only for you.

Only, for you.

The Queendom you seek is within you:
the beauty and the peace.

You get to choose for you,
what kind of death this is,
and what kind of life will be.

You get to choose for you,
but not for everybody,
the kind of world that will be.