For today’s prompt, write a future poem. The future is a never ending well of worry for some. Others harbor a great deal of optimism. Still others see a mixture of awesome flying cars and terrifying robot overlords. Regardless of your outlook, I hope there’s a poem in your very near future. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest
Right now it feels as if
the future will never arrive.
The days drag on
inside our homes
as we social distance
and shelter in place,
as we stay home
to flatten the curve.
Yet it also seems
as if we are hurtling into it
— thoroughly unprepared —
day after day
as the news firehose spews
and the numbers pile up
and we struggle to make sense of it all
when it’s impossible to put into context
because these are times like we’ve never seen.
So then how can we even imagine
whatever future follows
these unprecedented events
we can’t even believe we’re living through
while we are in fact living through them?
The future advances upon us
every moment
and in the same breath
we welcome it with the hope of relief
and we dread what new horror it might bring.
When this is over
— whatever that even means —
what does that future hold?
It comes. Fast or slow, it comes.
And we will meet it.