Calling Tomorrow’s by Richard Charles Stevens

“Once we weather this storm will we find our true form?”

This beautiful poem which I perceive to be about hope and the rebuilding of much during life’s many difficult times. I love how Richard has used a favourite song of mine by Marianne Faithfull (see audio below). I fell in love with the medieval sounding song when I breathed it in from my late uncle George’s copy of her debut 1965 album. The joy of poetry is how each reader can interpret the words to fit their own experiences.

First appeared on Rivers of Grue HERE

And I wonder when all is said and done
What will the future be?
Will communities grow from the grass roots?
All class groups be in the same classroom together?
Once we weather this storm, will we find our true form?
Will we spill forth in droves to run free through the groves?
Will yesterday’s blues echo dearly through petals resumed the
bloom nature composed?
Will flower faeries dare to wear rings upon their fingers and bells on the ends of their toes?
Will bluebells compel to unfurl for the bees?
Red roses propose to wed girls in pearl earrings?
Will the breeze ease or swell at reveal of the clearing?
And will the felled rise swiftly from their knees?
This is a brave new world we are nearing
When clearly the old was not healing
Maybe in nature’s own way
It was revealing that our labours were our ceilings
Our behaviour unappealing
While the feelings we were wasting were disgracefully evasive
We couldn’t see
We couldn’t hear
We couldn’t feel
Or smell
Or taste it
Until we learned to love what bared us naked

And I wonder when all is said and done
Will our porcelain hearts promise skies to confide all the secrets we keep deep inside them?
Will we go to where nobody goes?
Where the wildflowers grow in approachable silence?
Will our noses crinkle thinking of osmosis so revealing
that we owe a grand ovation to the wizardry of science?
Will we drink in sights and sounds around us?
Not a stirring echo groundless
Profound as the grounds upon which we exist
When the trick is sincerely to live
To give all held inwardly
Good grace to breathe
And embrace supernature unsheathed
What will the future be
if not our own to glean
from dreams where we play at the vale wading streams?
In-between woods and the trees
Please
Take them away
They’re free