No One Way
by Odin Roark

Mideast smoke may never clear
Forces know inversion
Custer set out to eliminate Crazy Horse
Only to find killers get killed too

Thus

Fate opts to continue as
One’s long term landlord
Mending hurt feelings
At times
Repairing aging plumbing
At times
Providing odd company
At times

Then

As consciousness takes up arms
Destiny is challenged
The enigmatic and reality
Face each other
In life’s enormous battlefield of experience
Decision time

Each turns
Moves away from each other
As if returning to their respective
Exhausted and impoverished armies

Not unlike unavoidable gravity
Making two planets pass
Out of conjunction
Or
Two political adversaries
Unwilling to note the other’s existence
Or
One’s own habitual stride
With legs of a miniscule lifetime
Coming together and parting
Like mercury at one’s fingertips

Fate and consciousness
Being but parts of the whole
Each with different directional pull
Each with a varying true north reading
Each a part of one’s complete story
Remains inevitably ordained for freedom
One way
Or another