“The tide is in our veins yet we still mirror the stars

                                                                         ~Robinson Jeffers, Continent’s End”

The hours hurtle us forward

like rockets in the stratosphere.

Time says I cannot wait

for loafers, street urchins,

or hood rats.

For the white-collar criminal,

the patriots, and the protesters.

We’re all hastening towards calamity.

Are these the last days,

of hours spent standing on food lines

that snake around corners?

Bare shelves gaping back at us.

Second-guessing our existence,

in the midst of a pandemic.

Shortages of medical supplies and

building equipment.

The unemployed grow impatient,

worried about stimulus checks

that never arrives.

We feel the tide in our veins,

the pull of a force of reckoning,

yet we look towards the stars.

MARSHA M. NELSON, playwright and award-winning poet is the author of two poetry books, Night Visions, and All Rise-Stand Up Holy Gates. She was nominated in 2018 for the Blue Light Press Pushcart Prize for her poem, “Hairpins and a Box of Chocolates.