I will be useless in the end times

A poem from 2019 as the enormity of our civilizational collapse sank in.

Uselessness

Vicki Robin, June 2019

I will be useless in the end times because I’ll still be saving rubber bands in case someone someday needs one.

I’ll be useless because I’ll still be rinsing out plastic bags in the sea as the water rises.

With the last gallon of gas, I’ll still be gliding to a stop in order to go just a little bit further. Once the gas is gone I’ll be thinking of something useful to do with the car.

The habits grooved deep in me as rituals of giving a damn will keep on precisely because they are habits.

I will be one of those wispy haired disheveled old women with a toothless smile calling everyone dearie and honey and seeing if I have something for them in my pocket.

It’s too late to change everything, my friends.

Our bad habits are deeper than our will to break them.

Our addictions to oil and blindness are crispr’d into our DNA.

So let’s save rubber bands and plastic bags, let’s empty our pockets, let’s fight for what’s right not because we will win (and we’ll want to) but because it’s just what we do.

Let us let all of this be okay.

What do I change now that the change has come? Perhaps only my expectation that we could change this… in time.

I am not hopeless. I am only without the hopes I had.

I will fall silent soon as life grows resplendent with truth.