THE WINDS OF CHANGE
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy Lovers were all untrue.
‘Tis well an Old Age is out,
And time to begin a New.
John Dryden
Amidst the Chaparral
The Santa Ana winds arrived
Before dawn, sweeping westward
Across the tinder dry land…
Heralding the election
Of a new President
After the Crumbling
And Humbling of the Old.
By mid-afternoon a Blaze
Had begun on South Mountain
Destroying all before it
As it Headed through the Valley.
Dryden was writing
Of the Seventeenth Century -
An Age of Fixity and Fearful symmetry.
Its End summoning…
A Time of Contingency and Flux
Of the Unknown:
The Good, the Bad
And the Ugly.
In the loosening
Of the Bonds of Propriety
There may again Emerge
An Unimagined Era:
A Restoration
Of the World beyond
The dying husk of Empire -
The Realm of Spirit.
The winds abated.
The Fire contained.
South Mountain scorched.
Its Earth enriched by Ashes.