From last year’s eclipse when all looked skyward, 

to yet another earthquake last week in Istanbul;

from a darkened sky denoting a world on fire,

to when I felt the foundations of our world shake:

it is existential navigation.

Like still-breathing butterflies pinned to paper,

we seem impaled to a world that waits and watches;

extreme weather, a globe spinning out of control,

warming up where it should be cold & vice versa:

it is existential equivocation.

An endangered future and an uncertain present,

looking back to the past, what was left undone;

a planet spinning out of control, like a plane

plunging, pilotless, from the carbon-clogged sky:

it is existential abdication.

Loss of land and biodiversity, yet other threats,

with climate change run amuck, unanswered prayers;

At the core, our humanity is at stake and much more

but we wait, sightless, voiceless, without a navigator:

it is existential eradication.

People: wake up, smell the coffee, don’t give up hope!

What humans have made wrong; they can then mend.

We can chart our course and navigate these currents.

I foresee our new beginning and not the bitter end.

It is existential amalgamation.