If thoughts are bricks;
Stories are mortar
Building day by day
A gleaming city out of clay.
The once muddled mire of the mind
Soon becomes the finest place
To pass the days away.
With winding streets,
Who keep the greatest thoughts
In well-wrought hollows,
With fountains and gardens
That garnish simple effectiveness
With a second layer of beauty and fruitfulness
With constant contemplation
And reformation
That leads to wonderous creation and re-creation
All so every brick shines in kind
With its fine placement;
Perfected
By the unwavering work
Of The Builder
—the human,
The thinker.
Until that old-growth city
Is an amicable place to grow old.
—A fine dream, is it not?
Yet the builder wavers
And fills their labors
With laxity and lovelessness
And so is less than perfect
They leave permanent scars…
But far be it from me to criticize!
You are the only one with the right to change your mind
—even if others find it an amusing game
And pursue to change and warp and hold
You
And sometimes their cold hands
Find a lever by which to command…
Yet still it is your mind.
In these two ways problems rear their austere yet fearful faces
Inside the graceful spaces of the mind
And we find ourselves with a problem of design:
—Every iteration has its temptations.
—Every creation its malformations.
Yet tell me builder,
Can you not build again?
With fresh materials
And in the end find
That you are free to choose…
And to remake the space in which you live.
