Come Atlas,
Let me help you.
Your shoulders must be awfully weary.
I can see fury coursing through swollen veins,
Your own body now quivers at your strength.
We believe you.
How long did it take you to convince your flesh
That it was capable of lifting the stars?
That your bones would lock dense
And rise up as armies,
Warring against the moon.
Titan,
You are old.
The silver in your beard is pulling at your chin,
****** out in the wind,
Splitting seas of doubt.
Do you still gaze at Olympus with ire?
With the bulges of wrath now coating your limbs?
What was given to you as a burden
Has become your pride,
Your nobility in the shame of defeat.
How tightly your fingers are gripping the sky
As if to keep it from leaving you lonely.
Are you lonesome Atlas?
Do your brothers still come to see you?
Your skin is stretched taught
Over what I imagine are diamonds,
Compressed over the span of millennial pain.
They told you you would break.
They laughed when you trembled,
Both biceps and faith.
You are petrified from you ankles to your relentless brow,
Flexing even to the corners of your heart.
In what year did your knee give out,
Leaving you in the position of perpetual homage?
And did it hurt in your soul or your back?
You are defiant at your very core
And have born your battle scar alone for so long
You have become a most magnificent island.
But the water is rising Atlas.
Let me help you.
My legs are spry and my heart just as fierce,
But I am willing to suffer the curse with you.
My feet have been planted in this earth as yours
And I have often felt the weight of the sky.
Share with me your story as my sweat runs free,
One ear to your thoughts and one to heaven.
Let me see what you have seen from this valley,
And shoulder to shoulder
We will stand.