Tuesday, March 13, 2012

I Got Away By Some Unconscious Grace

It was surely nothing that I could have done, at least not with this puny conscious effort
I was simply borne along like a tiny fallen leaf which started down upon one little stream
Delivered far away from the roots of the tree that bore myself and many others
And as luck would have it, my life was pretty easy, though surely not filled with good

I got away, but I really haven’t a clue as to how - Or much, much less, just why
Awoke in safety at a distance, washed up in honest surprise and amazed gratitude
So filled with happiness by the anonymous mercy that tears swelled my eyes
No way this blind and stumbling random walk I had just pursued got me here on my own

Yes, I did see the innocent masses lined up barefoot, dirty, sickened and hungry
But, someway, somehow, I was never chosen to shuffle along silently among them
I got away, but never did I even have a clue as to where I might be fleeing
Looking back I saw so many fatal accidents I had so narrowly and mysteriously avoided

Not through goodness, mercy, charity or selflessness did I find myself living like some king
It seems as though protected by an unseen guiding hand when viewed in this fuzzy retrospect
But that same hand bore down upon my comrades for their whole time from birth to death
All of us as fated, as if by chance, like any fragile butterfly, tossed in winds and storms

Like the one of a hundred million salmon fry that somehow returned to spawn
My life a series of mostly unseen and un-noticed Just In Times and By A Single Threads…
Venal and ugly as I was, it appeared as if my shortsighted greed was always rewarded
Others explained their random motions in this great entropy as being blessed or even great

I burned with that one tree within thousands of mountain acres where lightning struck
My amazing, unexpected, skin of the teeth upset was pulled off with no time remaining
A drunk laughing and singing in the high-speed wreckage wrapped around that large tree
Letting dumb luck fill my selfish ego with a fictional sense of divine entitlement

Inexplicably expelled by the roaring torrent, I peacefully observe from this quiet eddy
I got away by the unconscious grace of the same blind forces that steered us one and all
My tiny efforts within the maelstrom could not have hoped to produce this wondrous effect
Like a miracle baby found unharmed amid vast death and wreckage, I simply smile

Tossed by unimaginable forces that I could not see, I made up an explanation as I went along
Just as unforeseen as the dragonfly on my bumper, I still take pride in my great strength
Too full of myself to notice the great emptiness in total control of my irrelevant destiny
Laughably worrying that I had time to waste, I raced about leaving tiny, ephemeral tracks

I got away into this safe and quiet place for a bit of contemplation at the common brink
Having evaded the normal life of poverty and suffering, I still hear their muffled cries
I marvel at how it all happened, even as my confusion over why grows ever stronger
Briefly holding this still life of an insignificant instant in a nano-sized corner of the multiverse

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