I am roiled tonight with questions. What inexorable force impresses choice beyond all good and evil?
Why does the mantle of responsibility,
of power over many lives,
transfer no wisdom to the pathfinder for a billion?
Is this what we want,
we sons and daughters of the revolution?
We scoff at promises long ago sealed
and break them with the snap of a twig.
What did Dwight and John tell us?
What truly is the trinity of my people?
The president, the merchant and the priest?
Be still a moment — listen
for whispers from ages of man;
turn away — no profit grows down this path.
Water wears away all stone in time,
continents crumble grain by grain to the sea.
Time isn’t holding us to task.
A choosing, this or that,
is at the time of our choosing.
That is the one real power granted to our kind and time.
This poem is from my collection, The End of An Ordinary Life
© Craig Allen Heath 2020