Endangered Trailblazing

Endangered Trailblazing by Odin Roark Astride his father’s shoulders, Like a double decker bus, There was always what his father saw, And the child’s gaze beyond. They learned together What their senses taught them of reality. There were so many hills his father climbed, The boy seeing what was ahead on horizons, The father focused on firm footholds, Following trusted forest imprints, Relying on tradition’s habitude. This father is long gone now. This boy of shoulder wonderment Has grown wise of rugged tracks Leading to this day. The day… A stormy December afternoon Staring through a digital lens Atop a mid-town observation deck, The boy now a man Stares outs across a skyscraper landscape, A winterous tundra his father never had to pioneer. Realizing the Now of navigating Relies little on the primitive tracks, When plant, Animal, Rock, Weather, Parts of the undeniable whole Determined shelter and food, Life and death. Wisdom, The oft missing essence of success, Impacts little of today’s aspiration, Whose awareness respects not learned footprints, Nor hardened determination To stay true to a right direction, Instead… All too often Success honors but bushwhacked obstacles, The opportunity to conquer any and all, The razed aside, Inert and live, Banished and dead, Leaving many to query What lens can sharpen that which isn’t there? Today’s existence is but yesterday’s ethereal presence, Once preceded by integritous footholds/handholds, The resplendent oneness of nature’s vast inner-connection, Now all but buried beneath A stumbling culture’s duplicitous stepping stones. Tracks lead precariously to penthouse suites Where an eagles nest is but a Britannica reference, A redolent library book of often ignored history Reminding a father’s boy Staring through glass-layered revelation That decisions need pondering past momentary reward, That Nature’s swirling white layering the once wilderness of discovery May be foreshadowing avalanche forces Unrestrained in their ability to bury man. Pulling his eye away from the telescope, He considers a wind gust Lifting snow daring not to confront the ground, Choosing instead to swirl, To levitate with perhaps man’s exhausted currents from below, Struggling to rise through waning memory, Trajectories of so many devoted fathers Trusting honest trailblazing would never disappear. Fortunately… Like the cyclic snows from on high, Rising temperatures initiate their own revolution. Endings return to beginnings Nullifying load and weight. Time’s undaunted sagacity knows Once civilization’s latest aspiration expends, Creation knows no better Than to invent new trails, New boys on father’s shoulders, Tomorrow’s then and now… Again.