Love, we are a small pond.
The time on either side of now stands fast.
One way of ending the poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth.
To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.
Cherish your wilderness.
We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story.