Life as We Know It

A poet friend has inferred,

more times than I could count,

 that our country will unravel in its current form.

That is that the republic, 

as we’ve dubbed it,

will fragment into pieces of various types that won’t ever fit together again. 

He has cited historical precedents

As well as what seemed to be the obvious current day trends.

He began talking like this decades ago.

He didn’t sound silly to me in his intellectual argument

nor his prodigious and persistent pessimism at all,

but I was able to dismiss it as a “not in my time” kind of thing.

But now, the stray threads are being pulling apart,

And it seems that what held us together is being ruthlessly

Separating us apart at our very seams,

And it seems that maybe our great societies will fade into the past,

And all that we know will become something else,

And we can only hope and pray that we will see a day,

A new way,

Of doing better.