This is how our dreams end: Not an avalanche cascading around our ears, But the subtle shift of pebbles in a stream bed, An endless series of minute compromises with ourselves Which we justify to by raising any number of spectres: The weight of disappointment from unrequited expectation, The bogeyman of unintended consequence from our successes. So we make the box of our wishes smaller and then yet smaller, Until we do not recognize them as ours at all; Or, perhaps, we have adulterated them so often We can no longer ascertain At what point they stopped resembling our hopes and ideals, Not unlike when the batter, stepping to the plate, Scratches out the back line of the batterβs box Until its boundary disappears Into a confusion of dust and lime.
One final wish, then; scatter me at the crossroads when I die, So that, if perhaps for only that one moment, I can rise above the gray and cracked macadam Of these too-familiar roads And float into a clear, blue unambiguous sky, No longer a victim of the gravity Of the workaday concerns that shackle us together.