Seeking Wisdom
So much of the world is busy work
that seems to be designed to prevent
the potential magic of idle hands.
We grind through our days, showing up
on time, doing the work we are assigned,
for what? For our chips, our ante in a game
so large that it literally shapes our minds-
the questions we ask, the ways our edges
are defined. We've diced our lives
into fine, immediate slivers of time,
so that we can only ask What must I do
right now? What keeps my job that
pays my bills that feeds the kids who
go to school to learn the ways they
will someday fill their time? And we
can stay, of course we'll stay, inside
the system that ticks and ticks and
promises at least to keep the wolves
they say exist at bay, to guarantee
in forty years, when our shoulders stoop
and our muscles ache, that we can step
with a sense of accomplishment into
the light of our well-earned retirement,
with fewer means and less energy,
and we can scale mountains and learn
to play instruments we always said
we'd pick up back when we had nimble
fingers, and we will read libraries
and build museums to hold our own
great master works, and we will ask
the questions that come rushing into view,
and finally we will be happy and wise.
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