THE STORMS TO COME

THE STORMS TO COME

With everything that’s happening in the world today, I thought I’d throw myself out of my comfort zone and share something a little bit more personal.

Yesterday I dug out an old poem I wrote in a masterclass at University back in 2013.

The subject was selected for me and I was given 20 minutes to throw something together, but I think the message is in-keeping with the problems we’re all currently facing today.

It’s a little rhyming tale about how important teamwork and communication can be; about how much more we can accomplish if we would only work together, and about how ‘ignorance’ can be as harmful as just about anything else.

Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to realise how essential community can be. When we take the time to listen and to learn from one another, the 'impossible' doesn't seem so out of reach.

Galileo said “I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.”

My poem’s called…

THE STORMS TO COME.

The sky was grey, was pale and bleak, as winter skies so often are,

All clouds and fog and snow and sleet, the grimmest yet for them by far.

The air was fresh, was crisp and cool, the breath of winter all around.

All rain and hail and wind so cruel, and yet it hardly made a sound.

Asleep they lay, all in their beds, as cruel winds thrashed and thrashed outside.

All snoring, wrapped up in their threads, they thought that they could simply hide.

But storms were brewing everywhere, at trees they lashed and lashed anew.

The gusts were screaming out “beware!”, but still the people had no clue.

With fires lit and blankets knit, they thought that they were all prepared.

The frost still bit, it would not quit, but still the people hardly cared.

The trees, they fell, all one by one; the skyline clear and bare and flat.

The earth stretched up, consumed the sun; they didn’t even blink at that.

They all spread out in home and home, and scattered vast across the land.

With too much space for storms to roam, as single men they could not stand.

Their houses soon were whipped and smashed, reduced to rubble on the ground.

From house to house survivors dashed, but oft they gasped at what they found.

For none was better than the last, all men were equal in their fate.

But when the storm had finally passed, the lesson learnt had come too late.

Had they but had the sight to know, that many’s always for better,

They might have been but spared the snow, and thus survived in just a sweater.

If they had asked a neighbour first, and then the neighbour asked another.

If they had been the less dispersed, and worked with friend and foe and brother.

The winds would calm and seem less violent, each thrash a gentle, warm caress.

Their deaf’ning roars no longer silent, each team could count a small success.

All grouped up in a giant mass, a deadly force no storm could weather.

Why did they lie down in the grass, amidst a storm, without a tether?

How had they been so small and blind, to miss the only thing that matters?

Had only they been open, kind, our world might now not be in tatters.

You see there will be nothing soon, by storm or war or plaque it comes.

Not one of us is yet immune, for if one fails, the world succumbs.

I ask you now my friends, and not, to take my hand and face the storm.

For many hands can build a lot, together help our world transform.

I hope that after THIS crisis, the lessons will not be forgotten.

And if carried forwards... what a world we could build!