A year of fire and brimstone, 
a reckoning with massacres, starvations, vindictive assaults 
on hopes and dreams.

It’s been “disappointing ” to see infants lose their parents – and grandparents crippled with the pain of grief

in ruins, rubble, and relics of the quiet life they wanted more than anything. 

Blue skies & clean water
blooming flowers and fruiting trees 
fresh streams and songbirds’ lilt
the melody of playgrounds
symphony of toddlers
climbing and seesawing 
as the prayers for peace went on and on.

No resurrection 
nothing rising from the dead
but carrion over Gaza
and wolves in the Donbas,
wildfires breathe, droughts parch, 
as glaciers melt
and natural disasters are too many to remember.  

– The outside world a cesspool.

The inside world 
of dampened fire,
of dribbling lines,
a thirsty year of tablets 
for teeth, 
for a dug out cyst
a year for seventeen syllables
a year for words
a year for causes.

Is there any way back?
Any way out?
Any way beyond?

Is there nothing but now?

A year of finding a second home
among smiles & bowing necks 
the quiet glances
– the way a swallow flies 
or a heron glides. 

Goodbye to all those wet days,
all those days of cloud,
all the days of weather,

Not knowing is the lane to wisdom, 
not knowing’s the adventure, 
not knowing’s the way. 

2025 Year of Knowing too well
– and Not Knowing.