To be born is hard
and to be hard born
is to be thrown into a
hardening world.
All is congealing,
little flex,
less flow,
the water – frozen,
the air – frozen,
nitrogen,
hydrogen,
oxygen
icy to the touch.
Ideas, once fluid, are steel,
cold ruby rivers
frigid and ridged.
The jitterbug fast dance
has slowed to a waltz,
the space between dancers
now artic.
This killed that,
teeter nixed totter,
both abandoned and,
leaving one of two choice
– either/or.
Now the imagination is binary
wired for yes or no.
The mind has been eradicated almost
entirely with little left but the brain.
For recovery,
we must become slow and small,
a weed in the crack of a sidewalk,
a camel through the eye of a needle,
a child.