This poem was inspired by a fantastic workshop by Rob Hopkins who came to Dudley and took us on a time travelling adventure.

`` Future Poem ``

`` ``

‘The future must enter into you long before it happens’

Rilke

I start my day by talking to the bees,

hearing the prophecies in their collective hum.

I feast around the fire with my clan,

sharing food we’ve grown together on the land we walk.

The future smells of chamomile, wet soil, fresh grass, geraniums.

I don’t remember the last time I wore shoes,

checked the time,

tried to be productive.

We move with the moon here,

no trying to catch the sun in a clock face.

I walk through purposefully unpaved streets past rows of bicycles,

abandoned high rises reclaimed by ivy and bird nests

full of species not seen for years.

Deer meander through multi-story car parks reclaimed by moss.

The maps have been burned in wildfires,

the boundaries are liminal,

as we commune with gods on rooftop herb gardens,

arms outstretched to receive epiphanies from clear skies.

I traverse museums full of sculptures of beach plastic

and fascinating artefacts from the messy death of capitalism,

the relics of another empire fallen,

the speeches of men who thought they’d live forever,

a dead dictators crown growing rusty in a glass case

trashed with revolutionary graffiti.

It’s comforting to know nothing lasts except the wind,

the sun,

the seasons,

the darkness of the labyrinth,

spiralling towards a centre full of voices

raised in reverence for the truth.

I blow dandelion seeds into the mouth of ancient cave

filled with ancestors who would assume me one of them,

should I walk through the portal the other way,

to meet those who walked barefoot through life

and knew the old gods by name.

I swim in turquoise seas under the stars they navigated by,

and the world will change a thousand times again

before a single one supernova’s.

I plunge my heart into the cold and ask

to be worthy of a future free of cynicism,

where my enough is more than generous,

where my hope blooms in a night garden

growing through cracks in the concrete

and fills the air with sweetness by dawn.