Just how important do we
imagine ourselves to be?

Maybe not so much
as we would like to think.

Perhaps we are merely quirks
of sexuality and history.

Does that bruise our egos?
Who would we be if our
parents had never met.

The Moirae spin our fates
which hang on feeble threads;
the fragilest of continuities
bind us to this world
of brutality and beauty.

Yet we count our money
as if it were steel cable,
proof against rust forever;

we fight our wars as though
something noble and eternal
depends upon their outcomes;

we pretend we are playwrites
instead of actors reading lines.

Vanity of vanities.

In error, we drive ourselves
to beat hard against the wind,
headlong against time and death
as if we are actually steering.

Until the Day we must look
the Tiger in the eye and know,
too late, in that certain fatal second,
that we are small and weak
and mortal and always have been.

And the earth closes over us.