flock
an explorer understood a sapling growing alone on a vast plain -- its grace,
the paradox of the power inside its trembling tenderness,
of its immutability and constant transformation.

she spread the good news of her discovery,
and this spark lit the dry brush nearby
until flames devoured the air, extinguishing their source.

we trampled the sapling and she-who-discovered,
we many that came to extol them, to belong to them,
to commune with significance.

they gave us their power, and we killed them. our defeat was total, final.
but our nature demanded a new glory
to replace what we lost -- belonging, strength, meaning.

so we made a monument to a magnificent tree, all-ways dead.
then the masters came, established the rites and themselves as the instruments.
and the fees, of course. there are costs to bear. and we...

we are sand in the desert -- each parched grain, isolated,
aching with thirst, dying to cleave to something, to belong --
we submit so gladly and without thought to the will of the wind or the man with the rake.

but we are blind to everything --
our connectedness, our power, our sufficiency --
we do not see that we lack nothing.