How Far We've Come

When I sit in the middle of my house
listening to the birds, or I'm passing
through my office and I see the sunlight
filtered through the branches of the big tree
in just such a way, or I'm taken with
the particular image I have in my mind
of a singer or guitarist or piano player,
I think of Picasso. And I think of
how far we've come in only a few years.
Apartheid fell, so did communism, mostly.
Global warming is real, we've got
our first black nominee for president,
and your average house mother knows
what trans-fat is. And more and more
I finally feel I'm getting to all
the things I should have in my years,
like Picasso, painting out his dreams.
But then I look at the growing horrors,
the cataclysmic alignment of east
against west, the child suicide bombers,
and I wonder just how far we still have
yet to go, or I would have wondered
if in fact we had any time left at all.

(2008)