Folly is the rakish thought,
The waved saber at entropy,
That growth would permit
A gentle or linear path.
No.
These shades of today
In their antediluvian assertion
Stretch pallid beliefs
Like worn out skin
Across bones aching from experience
And each limping step
Into tomorrow
Quivers with unattended reason,
A dogged journey through dust-stained gales,
Where turns are inevitable,
Wise.
Chic is the unflappable ballast
Of a storm-tested heart
But oceans drown even the most revered,
The dedicated flailing
In undulating agony,
Choked by the churning salt
And white-cresting brutality
That spills from predictability.
Oh they’ll fight,
Those intrepid hands hardened
By rain-slickened rope running
Raw and hot,
Loosed by sideways seas.
But forgiveness lay
In the corner of passivity,
Where strewn survivors litter
Tide-smoothed sands.
The path veers
With passion or placidity,
Each a knuckle in the tangle
Of our striving.
And a sun lurks above
Knowingly
A beacon of straight-line promise
And refracted, bent reality.