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We Are The Rivers--All Destined to Be The Sea
Well, what do you know?
As we look back upon our days
Viewing it like a winding river,
A lone figure standing atop a cliff and watching the water sparkle
His thirst quenched with the waters of eternal life,
As promised,
We find that every day was much the same. Every droplet of water
Was identical to the next, and only the strongest gusts of wind,
The hardest, thickest curtains of rain,
Made the slightest impression in our flow.
We followed gravity all our lives, winding aimlessly--
From above, it looks as if we were lost all along,
Drifting about, looking for home.
Answer your own questions: were we?
Were you lost? Was I?
Did we know all along
That whatever we did,
We would end up at the shores of the sea?
Looking back, life seemed out of our control.
We were but pawns in the chess game of the gods.
Who were the queens, we wonder,
The fierce, powerful warriors, deadliest of them all?
And who was the king--the most precious?
I see it clearly in my mind, that game
With hundreds of queens, thousands of rooks and bishops,
Valiant knights aplenty, limited in thought and movement
But oh so -brave-;
Billions of pawns, waiting for slaughter.
It was an old rule in chess, I have been told,
That if a pawn was in your grasp, within sword’s reach by even an inch,
It was your solemn duty to slaughter it, or forfeit the game.
And the sides--were they black and white?
No…I see blues, reds, greens,
Dull and bright alike, silver and gold and lead and steel
Many, many sides, too many
Like each individual pawn wanted his own army
Like the gods of every element could not agree upon anything at all.
And what else do I see?
I see one king.
Per side? No--
In the entire game.
How few, I ponder
-god or man-
Have a king?
A treasure--a love?
Something to sacrifice it all for.
Lose every other, and you can win.
Lose it alone, and you have lost.
I see that king, and his sole queen,
Sense the love between them
Brave, courageous--
Would the king give himself up, I wonder,
If his queen was taken?
Perhaps the game was not lost,
But the king could not win.
Can life go on
When that single piece is gone?
END POEM HERE FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE.
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Love is
A chessboard, then?
Pieces in a game?
I don’t believe so; love is not so easily
Confined to such few words.
What is it, then?
Who can say?
Do we listen to man, or woman?
Human, or god?
Queen, or king?
Those in love,
Or those wretched with bitterness and hate?
Dictionaries have trapped love,
Cramming it into too few words
But it escapes between the words’ inadequacies
And lives on, however faintly.
How can we define it?
Every time I hear the word,
It is not the same.
Every utterance has a new meaning,
Every moment, love changes
On the outside; but within, it is the same.
Can none but the gods know love?
Can none but heaven define it?
Can none but the fortunate feel it?
While the star-struck wait below
Watching their lovebird high, their spirits soaring,
Wait in envy for love to swallow them whole
And disregard the pain
Of being spat out, abandoned on the floor.
When we watch our rivers at the end of time,
Where they join, where they part,
How will we know what was love, what was not?
How can we fight the regret and the loss?
How can we turn and face the sky
Never knowing what we’ll see when our souls rest for good,
Never knowing if we should dive down,
Become people of spirit, lost ghosts,
Or move on, stumble blindly in the hopes of finding the light--
How can we keep going? All we can do
Is unfetter our hearts
And pray that when we enter paradise,
We shall not be alone:
Love will find us in the dark.
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