it's never the huge gusts
that maneuver our vessels
ever closer to their shores;
it's wasn't those monstrous
atomic blasts,
or the exhalation of gargantuan
authoritarian breaths
that smashed and fused vast
tectonic plates together,
or ruffled-up the sea foam
of all seven oceans,
or ripped to shreds
every flag on the planet.
Rather, it has always been
the humblest puff
of patient explanation
that got us where we were going;
the kind words, delicate whispers
and quiet, inconsolable sighs
which have cracked granite mountains,
stirred hurricane-winds into action,
and caused cumbrous hearts
to fail—or else, rise to such occasions
as would seem to the common chests
which dared to contain them
as far too enormous,
too convoluted, too labyrinthine
to have been the plain, inevitable results
of such tiny perturbations.
