A new idea finds the mind
and digs itself a home behind
what it finds still living there,
rewiring lights and such to suit,
requiring sometimes a reboot.
Then it takes root, without care
for walls and beams it wrests aside,
for contents lost when seams collide.
It takes great pride in breaking
the models of forgotten thought,
old lesson plans no longer taught,
like recipes not worth making.
And in that space it will expand,
imagining the world it plans
not build on sand, but on stone;
its buttresses unshakeable,
its hold on us, unbreakable,
its taproot makes a great throne.
But that illusion cannot last;
in birth, idea’s death is cast.
How fast new seeds demand light
and will destroy without regret
the noble root, and will upset
tradition’s sense of what is right.
And so the tragic, fragile mind
consists of what is left behind
and what is blind and just made.
There, in that pause between the sigh
of death and birth’s great squall and cry,
none deny they are afraid.
22 FEB 2017
