Hope for the World

(From the biking philosophers’ notebook)

If the world is separate from us,

All its systems

waltzing madly onward

toward our doom,

And we have no reign, no reins —

If someone else has made these bad decisions

And we, as pawns, must pay

in servitude and stress

There is no hope

But if we dream the world

in our sleep and in our aspirations

And if the world is breathed into its being

by our collective breath

And by our inspiration

Then nothing that we see exists outside ourselves

And as we heal ourselves

we’ll breathe it whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 1, 2012