The SUn rises Anyway

The sun rose this morning. 
Anyway.
Despite.

The sun doesn’t decide to rise 
based on my rising to greet it 
or whether fires burn wild and far 
or how many new cases of COVID 
or how much hatred 
or fear
or something 
I don’t understand and can’t name
causes people to 
put children in cages and
cut down thousand-year-old redwoods
and eliminate 
basic 
human 
rights 
of people they don’t 
recognize as their own.

The sun doesn’t ask,
“Is your heart broken?
Can you endure 
another day?”

It just shines.
The earth turns
and the sun returns.

And in the sun’s influence, 
morning glories open bright purple faces,
birds sing in all their bird languages,
rosebuds open and offer their scent,
lizards emerge and commence push-ups,
honeybees buzz and deliver pollen,
dogs wrestle, romp, and retrieve, 
all the green things grow 
and make fruit and seed, 
people get busy with 
all their busy people tasks,
including small and 
extraordinary acts of 
kindness, compassion, 
and courage,
and I write to you.

Melanie Phoenix
[email protected]

I imagine somewhere 
elk and buffalo graze in great herds 
and wild horses run free,
humpback whales breach and
dolphins race in endless pods 
across oceans teeming with
fish and octopus, 
vast forests of kelp and coral, 
and strange, deep sea creatures 
no human has ever seen.
And many people 
shower other people 
with love.

The sun beams its sunness,
its prime directive to allow 
it all, whatever happens 
on the planets it warms,
while humans make choices 
about how to be 
and what to do with it all. 

How will we stay 
awake and aware
and what will we do
with our despair, with 
our grieving, broken hearts,
our compassion, courage, 
and joy, and our fierce, 
unlimited love, 
while the sun watches 
and the earth keeps turning?

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