what you create will destroy you

Tethered | Poetry

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what you create will destroy you

The images of self, the marvels of ambition,
the icons of this age of ease — all harbingers
of erosion, crumbling back into dust.

Giving up all dreams might be considered
despair, but how many dreams are running on
unperturbed by disintegrating souls,

on and on into the future beyond
our ways and means, beyond the frail bodies
of saints left behind, tending their garden,

this old world. Soft hands on tender leaves,
a wrinkled pillow to each drooping head, eyes wide
to the eternal Light. What do you most desire?

I have dreamed young dreams and proud, and lost
many to time, and wondered what would come
of me if I let them go, but I was in love

with phantom powers. I thought they owned
the sky and called forth rain. Now I lift my eyes
to the sky and pray for rain. Now I feel the gift

trickling down the tracks in my cheek
and give thanks for a dream I do not own.
Now I love you, and not the idea of you.

Hold fast to this: your gods
are feeble, mute, deaf,
and blind, they cannot save you —

this is the final blessing, to know
the works of your hands will fail,
and to set your hands to work.

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