Benignity

 

​

Life was benign.

Or so my younger self thought

Once

But not anymore.

​

Life can be many things.

A multiplicity of perceptions,

Muse for inventions,

Heaven on earth

Or hell.

Can offer inspiration,

Or absorb motivation,

Like an all-consuming black hole.

 

Perhaps it’s individuals who determine their lot,

Or fate; or some kind of God.

And yet

There can sometimes be

Such swells of cruelty,

A noticeable absence of love.

 

What happened to the little acts of kindness?

Or were they never there?

Was it the world that changed –

Or us?

 

Past poets point to an overwhelming question,

But never reveal what it is.

 

Can we leave it to chance:

Hold up our hands

And acknowledge we have no say

In what becomes of us?

That we are powerless against fate,

Fate not enslaved to love or to hate

But to that wheel of fortune

That sends reeling

The world seen through individual eyes.

 

Life is many things:

A sequence of scenes

And quilted memories

Stitched together

At their edges.

 

Life is

A bouquet of time, as spheres collide,

But something it never was

Is benign.