Monday, September 28, 2020

THE SLIGHTEST

Remember, dear passenger—
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.