Introspection From Looking Outward

Sometimes, I sit.

And I think.

My thoughts are dominated

By things that startle and unsettle me.

How have we arrived here?

*

I watch the outward scenes

Unfolding like a destructive wave

In front of me and think

"Where does this get nurtured?"

Its brashness and rudeness confounds me.

It is the rumble of a catastrophe,

The black belly of hatred

And its insufferable appetite

For the sticky, addictive taste

Of confrontation and division.

I want to stop looking

But it's a car crash

And I am a rubbernecker.

I hold my hands up to my face

And peer through my parted fingers

And think:

"What does all this mean for us?"

*

I try to stop them but my thoughts careen

To fiction I've read and what I know of history.

Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, Wilfred Owen.

I don't want to go there.

Visions that unsettle,

That induce fear.

I am a woman but I fear I will become a vessel,

An instrument.

I wear my "Votes for Women" t-shirt

Wondering,

"Will I still have the freedom to do this soon?"

Or will I be subdued?

Or dead?

Atwood knew the black heart

Of control and division

And the grasp of those men who are hypocrits of hate.

She showed us,

A feminist prophet.

Did she believe that it would become true?

*

I don't want to live in a ravaged world

An earth torn up.

When I imagine carnage and ruptured earth,

I veer away towards thoughts

Of a simple life, in the woods

For me and my loved ones,

Its opposite.

We have a mountain view, water from a spring,

And hear the sounds of nature around us.

We dig, using soil and seeds to provide.

Smells of good living pervade our air.

We no longer look outwards

But to the horizon and the sun,

Its rays caressing the valley,

Its universal warmth, not controlled by humans

And their spiteful invective and avaricious raids

From their artificially contrived worlds

Of wealth and luxury.

We live to sustain, to grow, in a harmony

Of our own making.

*

But this is an idyll of my imagination.

It suggests choice in the dream

Of a simple life

Which simply would not be.

I think of the gruesome landscape of "The Road" and

I wonder about roaming what is left of the land

With my boys by my side and a gun between us

Loaded and ready to shoot.

Should I get a gun?

Canning - maybe I should get into canning.

Maybe a windmill? Or buy batteries in bulk?

Could I gut an animal? Will there be animals left?

Again, I shrink from the idea

And yet, it fires me too.

Could we be alright, together?

*

My boys.

My life.

I don't want them to go to war.

I don't want to sit, wondering, hands clenched.

I want to know where they are,

Close to me, not just my heart -

A warmth I can hug, I can hold

And close my eyes and breathe it in.

Is this something I might have to face,

Their being gone?

A premature absence that cuts and smarts

Over ages

But whose impact arrived like a gut punch,

Lessening me in an instant

Leaving my pain to leak through forever shining eyes.

Because when I look out, this is what I see

Hovering, drone-like on a skyline closer than is comfortable:

Loss.

Shouts, shots, screeches, smoke, savagery.

Death piled high.

Death placed low

- in pits.

A dominant power decreeing destruction

For what?

I don't see the pull

That creates this mayhem.

I don't understand the wrenching down

And suppression of other life.

*

I have to pull myself away from here

Into the everyday.

There is peace in the mundane,

The routine.

I resist the squawk of news

Revealed on reels,

The sound bite that sinks

Sharp, yellow teeth into my heart

To maul it for the pleasure

Of tasting my fear.

I hate this feeling.

It threatens to weigh me

And cling to me with its chokehold

And its black hands,

Mounted on my back, making me crooked and hunched.

Today, though, I can shrug it away.

I block the noise and focus on the now.

But it pokes.

It infiltrates my consciousness

With its dirty nail on its pointed, elongated finger:

"Look at this! Look what's happening here!

Come away from the quiet and the calm.

You need to see this and what is being said here."

All of it dark. All of it angry. All of it lies.

*

To defend, to secure, to protect.

I will do it

And I will suffer to do it.

*

The net conclusions that I draw

From trawling through my thoughts

Are two-fold:

I am lucky.

I live a life of freedom.

The confines and restraints I feel are those

Created by a life well lived

And from the maintenance of that existence.

Their binds are loose really.

I am a prisoner of a consumer war;

Non life-threatening.

I greet my morning with gratitude

And a breakfast I do not have to scramble for.

I am lucky.

This is first.

*

Secondly:

I am no vigilante for truth.

I am no warrior.

I am me in all my forms

And I am little.

I hold no power.

I have no status.

I am a woman, a mother, a worker.

Ordinary human living an ordinary life

In extraordinary times.

But know this:

If I have to, I will fight.

I feel it in my gut

And it suffuses me with warmth

And hope

And it leaks from me in tears of determination

And resolve.

It is not my vision of my future

To be a fighter

But it is one which I will accept

Should Danger launch itself headlong at me

Claws out, snarling.

*

It is my hope that I am never tested.

*

But I am ready.