In the Embrace of a Gaze

Nornir hurl a personality like a golden ball,

Toss it into the wind and hope someone is there to catch it,

Some do for a time but with weary years

Instead of seeing its color sparkling under the light,

The scars of diamond shot through along its stitched ridges,

The rubies of a heritage and the dewdrops

From years of tears and sweat,

The way the hot air is cooled by its passing

And how the whooshing sound shatters space

Undaunted

Ever-cutting and balancing the divide of ice and fire

Hearkened in a soul stretching into the endless

before the sea, the sky, and earth were shaped,

Somersaults in time unheeded,

The sands of a soul crafted by gods known and forgotten

This little ball refracting infinite light

pierced with the triumph of the cosmos

Thuds into person after person

A misshapen lump of frayed rubber wrapped in brittle leather

An heirloom found in a moldy attic, uncomfortably damp

A little too soft and grimy with every hand that’s squeezed it

Discarded it

And left it to rot.

“It was a fine ball once,” a wistful patriarch mutters to others who nod in agreement.

“I wonder if it could be repaired,” whispers another.

“Aye, it could. Perhaps if we close the box it came in

And forget about it, perhaps if we check in

Every few years and open the box

It will be as beautiful as we remembered

And if not

We can lament its grotesque form

And never hold it with love

Or hurl it through a cheering sky

So that it can be seen soaring in the sublime bands of a sunset’s amber rays.

No, it must learn to soar on its own

Placed in this box until it figures it out,

Learns to be how we insist and slays the dodo

On the 367th day of the last year anyone can remember.

Only then will we let it out and see it for what it is.”

And they nodded and agreed, expressing pity

But happy to be rid of the eyesore

That has swirled through the very fabric of existence

and gathered as clumps of dust in the attic

Of a little bungalow called community

Never quite dying,

a craggy glistening thing of Power.