The great celestial wheel perched on a peninsula,
with a base carved from the black stone cliffs along the
jagged banks of an ocean which reaches out towards forever.
A great colossus with an iron skeleton. Brittle paint,
meticulously chiseled away by colliding sand,
reveals rotting girders and rusted rivets,
yet somehow the ancient structure still holds.
Chips and scratches catch the sun
as the machinery grinds and turns a weathered glass face.
Represented by painted symbols of mythical birds and beats,
every soul that ever was or will, every child born of desire and faith
tenderly cradled by a cold, inanimate nurse-maid.

The headland is choked by a motionless mass.
Shackled arms outstretched, faces upturned,
their necks crane and their eyes squint against the brilliance.
They each wait for a unique purpose, their singular destinies intertwined
in a magnificent harmony built from a puzzle of infinite complexity.
Under the weight of such knowledge they crumble,
falling down onto their backs in anguish,
bargaining and pleading for release from their burden.
The throngs of the hesitant lay broken at the base,
writhing limbs creating fallen angels in the sand.
Here there are no halos, nothing so obvious to distinguish
those who choose to be chosen from those who will to be damned.
Viewed long enough through that revolving prism of glass,
virtuous souls refract, separating into primary colors,
the innocent vulnerability and untapped bravery laid bare.
Thus prompted they turn their eyes to the promises of the horizon.

The terrified wish to live forever in the lingering moments
between a second hands movement.
Those brief moments of transition, drawn out eternally
while precious opportunity blows away like yellowed paper in a breeze.
Yet somewhere inside determination grows,
a feeling blown in by the salty sea-breeze.
Gathering with a billion breaths,
it congeals in the lungs, festering before seeping into the blood.
A revitalizing symbiont carried to the fingers and the feet,
to the muscles and the brain, rewiring nerves,
and morphing everything it touches into tempered steel.
Fortified, the timid will stand again,
brush the defeat from their faces with their shaky hands,
and dare dream again of purpose and dignity.

Cherish the chance to be more than just an scattered collection
of wasted chances and forgotten promises.
Stand bravely when again comes the call to sacrifice security
for even just a glimpse of that long imagined utopia.
Press on further towards point where the sky intersects the sea,
every moment of determination leading back
to the redemption that should have been.
Surrender and everything that once was lost shall come again,
the better days behind compare nothing to what waits ahead.
Rejoice! Rejoice! The wheel has come 'round again.

04/19/2009

Posted on 04/19/2009
Copyright © 2024 Alex Chambers