When Greatness Never Comes
From childhood I dreamt
of doing wondrous things,
stringing together an
unending, unbreakable
necklace of words, gold-
toned sounds feeding
meaning to my readers,
like food to the famished.
I grew bolder: I would create
word-mountains in the reader's
mind, words that would never die,
but those words were all stillborn.
Years, decades went by.
I grew fat and happy with
wife and family and friends.
Finally, with defiance at the
caprice called Fate, who parcels
out talent by her whim alone,
I said, "So be it! I'll never touch
Shakespeare's toe, nor ruffle
Dickens' collar-- I'll never even
get to tickle silly Ezra Pound."
I'm anonymous, and so too
are you, most likely....
And that is all right, because
as a young man, you see,
my soul came to me-- oh yes,
my soul came quietly to me,
and whispered, I exist forever,
without a start, without an end,
a mockery of time.Then it teased,
"Now fit THAT into your mind,
into your body ever so brief,
just a breath of flesh really."
Things that come,
come in their own way.
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2015
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