You know the story,
the one that ends with the hero
face down in the mud.
Or, maybe, the story that ends
at the by-no-means guaranteed discovery
of the protagonist dead on the bed,
her eyes shut tight against
light and dark,
out of range of the magic that forever
lurks and lingers in the rare and intangible air.
They are, I tell you,
the self-same story but for the details,
which I do not mean to demean.
After all, if the stories are the same
wherever they end,
and at all of their ends,
then the details
—the way the life came
and the way the life went—
twisting and turning,
falling down and getting up,
are all that really matters.
And,
we so stipulate,
the details, the twisting and the turning,
the magic before
and the magic that lingers,
the falling up and the getting down,
are the major symptoms,
the proof we can infer,
of the grinding wheel,
the great grinding wheel,
the irresistible force
constantly confronting
the human (objects) on their way,
and always in the way
of the grinding, travelling wheel
that somehow contrives
to always be rolling down
our very path, our whatever path,
to wherever we meant to be,
to where we would be,
in whole or in part,
but for the wheel that rolls
always against us,
always failing to know
that we are exactly there
where we are.
All of which means
that at the very least,
it makes no sense to blame the wheel
that has no ethics, no passion, no fun and no life.
Entirely unlike our uncelebrated selves,
with our vast potential
for ethics and passion and fun
and life before death.
So tell the stories, all,
of Jack, say, and Jill
and the great fun they had
on the twisting way uphill,
and the tumble down,
and the get back up to go back up,
where there remained more fun to be had,
or still a world to spy from the top,
until one broke a body part
or broke the spirit that gets back up
and left the other to solo the rest of the way.
All we know is that they set out one day,
one ordinary, even familiar, day,
to work at their endless tote
and on the way they ran afoul
of warlords, maybe, or amphibians
—the rare bloodthirsty kind—
or calendars stuffed full of deadlines.
They labored, dripped sweat, danced and dodged
and laughed aloud and fled in terror.
It wasn’t much,
but it was life
and it would do.
Sometimes they shared their load
and sometimes traded it for a different load,
or passed it on and sat to rest.
One day very like the day before
and the day to come.
It isn’t much,
but it is life
and it will do.
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