The Time for Change is Upon Us
“The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”_
Dr. Martin Luther King
These days my bones ache
with remembrance of past wounds,
recalling their history of motion long gone.
Like shells, bones are the strength that made it all possible,
moving from one place to the next.
Walking the beach, I turn to go down to the water’s edge, and something whispers, “the bones of old hatred are still stalking our beaches.”
This I know.
They are skeletons of a former way; they are like shells, long empty of life.
But everything says goodbye to something, even shells.
It’s clear the time for change is upon us.
We came from wet things crawling out of the water to discover walking.
Will it take that long for us to fathom love?
I wonder, will we say goodbye to the old way of breathing? Will we die trying?
When my time comes who will use my dust and for what purpose?
What little piece of new life will emerge then? The incoming tide licks my toes.
I am close to the water’s edge.
Of course I pick up one or two shells. Who can resist? Some misshapen, some whole, some broken.
What happens when we say goodbye? The new life uses the old to enrich the soil. They say we are here because a few stars exploded.
I wonder, what now is the shock that will finally animate new life? What will emerge from the great sea of transformation?
I am drawn to orange and lavender colors swirling in the rhythm of the waves, one spiral so flawless it could only have been nurtured into being with great Love.
I bend over to pick it up. My own bones remind me they are still here.
I return the others to the earth, and watch the water bathe them, grains of sand wearing them down to polished jewels, the waves taking them back in. There is beauty in change, no matter how slow or relentless the friction.
I will keep the spiral shell, a promise that we too will be reclaimed by truth.
© Linda Beatrice Brown