When in the realm of too-sentient things

I hollered and flapped and broke both  my wings

I wailed and screamed and beat my breast

The wind blew by

And whispered,

“Just rest.”

I screamed to the wind that there was too much to do

The wind agreed,

that he was busy too.

“Well, how can I rest, while I’m running this race?

I never get ahead, a slave to serotonin, confined by time and space,

You wouldn’t know! You just  swirl around, as free as you please.”

And then the wind made an amused little breeze.

“Me? Where I want? HA! Don’t make me laugh.

I go where I must, loosing wheat from its chaff

Where temperatures drop

there are storms to make

where water levels rise

there are storms to slake

If only I could choose, and  go where I will,

I’d spend much more time just being still.”

“How do you choose which task to do first, 

which work is good and which work is cursed?”

“Sometimes I destroy. It’s not mine to choose.

I don’t control what people will lose.

Like water goes down, by gravity coerced

Circumstances hound me, extracting my force.”

I considered for a moment

how I’m kin to to wind

and asked, calmer then,

“So how do I choose the tasks that I should

with my twisty mind  spinning 

How to be bad or be good

My systems at war

Over where my energy should go

Wind, tell me, how do I know?

Give me your wisdom please!”

And the wind swirled his cloak

And said “Follow me.”

So I rode on his coattails

Floating wild and free.

Through hurricanes and blizzards and wildfires we rode

Over and over, the wind destroyed.

“Why?”  I asked him. “ WHY?”

Sadly he said “ I can do no other than what I do.”

I screamed and I screamed “I am jealous of you!

 I hate all my choices!  My mistakes are my shame!

You do your business and never get blamed!” 

I sobbed and I whined of my responsibility.

The wind sighed, and let me be.

“All you can do

is keep with the flow of truth

Truth isn’t soft. She never shields.

She shows you blood as well as green fields.

You must see the beauty within the brutal

If you ever want to be at rest.

The wind blows the way it knows

The humans act as they learned best.

You have to learn to face the flow.

You won’t be able to stop the shame

until you learn to stanch the blame