THE WINDS OF CHANGE

Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy Lovers were all untrue.
‘Tis well an Old Age is out,
And time to begin a New. 

John Dryden

Amidst the Chaparral
The Santa Ana winds arrived
Before dawn, sweeping westward
Across the tinder dry land…

Heralding the election
Of a new President
After the Crumbling
And Humbling of the Old.

By mid-afternoon a Blaze 
Had begun on South Mountain
Destroying all before it
As it Headed across the Hills. 

Dryden was writing
Of the Seventeenth Century -
An Age of Fixity and Fearful symmetry.
Its End summoning…

A Time of Contingency and Flux
Of the Unknown:
The Good, the Bad
And the Ugly.

In the loosening 
Of the Bonds of Propriety
There may again Emerge
An Unimagined Era:

A Restoration
Of the World beyond
The dying husk of Empire -
The Realm of Spirit.

The winds abated.
The Fire contained.
South Mountain scorched.
Its Earth enriched by Ashes.