Once in a while 

a cosmic question is asked 

as souls gather 

before the beginning. 

The collective consciousness asks: 

Who will awaken us?  

Who will hold up the mirror 

to what we’ve been afraid to face, 

who will stir the sleeping truth 

in all of us at once. 

The universe asks: 

Who is willing to become a turning point? 

Who will step into the current 

of cosmic evolution, 

who will take on the role  

that shifts the trajectory 

of an entire age. 

The earth asks: 

Who will break what is breaking me? 

Who will expose the fractures 

beneath our feet, 

who will force the reckoning 

that healing requires. 

The threshold of an age asks: 

Who will be the fulcrum? 

Who will stand at the seam 

between what was and what must be, 

who will apply force 

against the world’s breaking point. 

The future asks: 

Who will carve the doorway? 

Who will make the opening 

through which we can enter, 

who will clear the path 

for what is not yet born. 

Need asks: 

Who will answer me? 

Who will rise 

when the world can no longer 

remain the same, 

who will step forward 

when every other force  

shrinks from the threshold 

of what must be awakened. 

Because they – 

the askers at the edge of an age–   

know that in the great unwinding 

of history, 

in the long breath 

between centuries, 

one soul will answer 

the cosmic casting call 

and play the part 

that catalyzes the collapse 

and makes space for the new. 

That soul will not be remembered 

as a saviour, 

in this cosmic parable, 

but as the shadow 

against which

an era defines its light. 

In every retelling but one 

wildly unpopular opinion, 

the story will return to the same truth: 

a name spoken in hatred, 

a figure cast as the villain 

a force the world condemns. 

I hope that my children, 

and theirs and theirs and theirs, 

will inherit many things. 

The way the love in my chest 

is a lighthouse 

with a bulb that never burns out. 

The way beauty ambushes me 

in the middle 

of the mundane. 

The way my curiosity lifts 

its little lantern, 

casting light  

from the small, brave questions 

I keep alive inside 

my own private heart, 

and how, under that glow, 

and from a farther horizon, 

the unexamined story 

begins to make undiscovered sense.  

How, once illuminated,

it splits in two: 

A president is a purely evil man 

in one telling, 

and an ancient reminder 

that humanity’s work is unfinished, 

in another. 

He was power hungry 

and wreaked chaos,

corruption,

and destruction

in one story. 

And, in another, 

once, 

as souls gathered, 

he accepted the job, 

and answered the cosmic question: 

Who will awaken us?