I am a grain of sand.
You are a grain of sand.
Together we are the tropical beach paradise.
Together we tip the scale.

Looking into the clear hourglass,
suicide bombings,
women sold,
another black man pulled over,
his murderer honored at the banquet,
on the shore a cormorant gasps
covered in thick petroleum.

It seems the hour will never pass.
We are stuck in this brutal moment.
But another grain of sand gets through.
It passes to the other side, a small smile.
It took so long,
no one noticed it make its way beyond the mire
and land with a quiet thus among the others.

Laura spends her night making
pipe-cleaner flowers for the class party,
she envisions her students giggling while dancing the Macarena.
Mehdi pushes away the gun,
and walks the dirt path
with his sister Fatima to school instead.
They laugh about their new puppy.
Douglas defends Ja’quan in court.
Finally he is set free.
Katy, Paul, Jean-Claude, Annu
Vladimir, Xioawen, make the multitude
who march down Park Avenue,
their voices rise,
forming clouds to softly rain across the earth.
She wipes away his sobs and holds him close
util all his pain is gone.
We heal.

The hourglass continues.
One grain of sand… another… another.
The tipping point waiting.
Seconds, eons, minutes, generations.
No timelines only concentric circles, a figure 8.
A better world elusive,
a mystery like life after death.
We can imagine it, but we are not sure.
The blast of the big bang is still ringing.
Perpetual creation – its light is so bright,
I need sunglasses.

We are the messiah
heading to the promise land.
You and I and all of us
single grains of sand.