Something racist, foul, cruel, and corrupt is in its death throes

as something egalitarian, loving, kind, and just is trying to be born.

But right now the baby is in a breech position

the mother’s cervix cannot dilate

the new babe cannot descend into the birth canal

hence the chaos, convulsions, contractions, violence, screaming, and pain.

Maybe the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s throat.

Maybe a ventilator is choking off the mother’s breath.

The motto for this year should be “I can’t breathe.”

We must all be midwives to the birth of a new way of being —

with ourselves, with each other, within our communities, and with Mother Earth.

We need to help the baby turn

and to do that we each have to turn something upside down inside ourselves.

We need to help the mother open and dilate,

and to do that we must open to something new and tender inside ourselves.

Individually and collectively, we have to make a shift, a tectonic shift, a polar shift.  

There is no going back to normal.

I wouldn’t want to anyway —

the old normal is what got us into this mess.

There is only time for planting the seeds of a new life, a garden that will nourish all.