The Stop And Go Light

There was a time

in each of our lives

where we learned

the stop and go light.

Red means stop

and green means go,

as simple a measure to follow.

Red means stop,

attend to a larger reference

of other people’s intent

in a same playing field.

Green means go,

return

to your original intentions

and continue proceeding

into that busy field.

But then yellow was added,

not between red and green

but between green and red.

Yellow means. . .

a need to heed . . .

by anticipation.

Be alert

and be aware

for what will come to pass

in your personal direction

will have to include

the possibility for others

at some adjustment

of your course of action

for it all inclusively to be so.

On a larger scale

the planet itself

has a stop and go light too!

But the light has been on green

to us for centuries!

Red is rare . . . very rare.

Maybe personal traumas

are red-like in that light,

well maybe like . . .

natural disasters.

Maybe those are red

on a planetary level

but so far

only in special circumstances.

Maybe yet we cannot justify

the introduction

of a yellow light

at this magnitude.

For what?

We really haven’t

personally experienced

this kind of red

in a year of Sundays!

And now there is talk

about a yellow light,

at that scale?

When did grand

become so localized

and so intimate?

When did vast

become so personalized?

How did one little light

at one small intersection

become every one

at the same corner?

All of us, mankind,

waiting at the same light?

Turning yellow as we speak . . .

What intersection is that?

What are the cross streets

at that intersection?

I think that intersection

is called . . .

global . . .

warming . . .