Tag: power

poem for labour day

sun-flower (black-eyed susan in millennium park, peterborough · ben wolfe

the world is as it is
because
we followed the rules,
did as we were trained

used ‘best practices’
rather than love
or our higher brains

what if
(at first for just a half an hour a day,
until our long-domesticated hopes
recall the taste of it)

we tell each other,
tell our disbelieving selves

that in the quickening of that slower time
our highest aspirations
are the rules

our longings are the compass
and the map,

the light that knows
and shows the next small step,

the whispering seed
that knows it is a tree

and we are free
to hear each still-small voice

— September 4, 2017 / April 29, 2022

prometheus, 2009

(for earth day)

maybe god
left us with an irresponsible babysitter

all those aeons of loving care
since we were only hydrogen

and then some rube of a teenage sub-god
gave us a glimpse of fire, as a joke
and we were gone

out of the cradle,
over the rail,

taking in the fall
from this 21st-story balcony

stretching it in time
calling it a lifetime

making believe
we were born to achieve

this
terminal velocity

— March 26,  2007 / April 2009

 

 Oversoul, by Alex Grey (detail)