Totem Reality


Can we ever escape
that which we create
but often choose to ignore?

Like the mismatched rocks of a cairn,
random choice is not an option,
for complimenting shapes and sizes
make up one's balance,
one's direction,
one's harmony.

Yet some…

Such as aspiring high rise urban dwellers
often live a rock, steel and glass totem life,
stacking mismatched building blocks,
like mutated animal lineage not of the fittest,
unknowingly making unbalanced direction,
even while gasping air to defy their self-made reality.

Might they be destined to realize a primeval demise,
like a surreal incarnation atop modern scaffold
where ghostly burial rites of Great Plains nomadic tribes
patiently wait for the happening?

Can primitive wisdom ever penetrate assumed contemporary importance
before the inverted vortex of tumbling balance
consumes itself atop the rising funnel of ignorance,
distilling the wrongs of misbegotten power
to but sand kernels of infinity's hourglass.

Such might be the destiny of man's innate totems,
the unique building blocks that document the species we are
while stealthily we try desperately to become a species we are not.