Monday, April 2, 2012

Stories of Shifting Sand


Written for a Poem a Pic Contest in which it won 2nd Place. 
Here's the video prompt that had been provided to us:
‘You’ve got a friend’ By Ilana Yahav (A sand artist who creates a series of images by shifting sand around with her fingers on a glass surface)


Stories of Shifting Sand

To paint a picture in the sand
Nor halt the waves’ rampage
To live this transcendental life
As if nothing could change

Eternity that our minds compass
Fragility that it deals in
Who’s playing with the Sands of Time
Trifling with our existence?

At one moment the Sun bursts out
Whose hand just drew it’s rays?
The next moment the clouds pour forth
Nor shelter come when we pray

Success does dog our every step
Until we find the pit
They say one should not laugh too hard
Lest tears besiege is next

Peace marches now go hand in hand
With riots in the next state
We wait in terror to mark God’s land
While Science colonizes Space

In sleep as in the midst of dreams
Whose eyes are watching ours?
Try trap this impudent soul
Who likes to thus play God

Who’s playing with the Sands of Time
The Sands of our existence?
Let’s catch this player in the act
Demand an explanation

               ***
But he just turns and smiles and says
The fault lies not in me
I sweep the floor, by candlelight
Nor paint the sand that breathes

The sand that breathes be you my love
Here today, gone tomorrow
Yet worlds will still keep going round
Moulding new joys and sorrows

Close your eyes and now envision
Close blackness all around
No sight not smell nor feel nor touch
No space nor even sound

And this be no strange fantasy
But what awaits each one
The tree from which your life fruit falls
Will continue thriving on

Yet eyes still open, fruits still bloom
Sand cannot be rid of
Another time you’d open your eyes
With your loved one looking on
                
                   ***
That moment if be worth the wait
The shift in time and changing fate

The moment that no sand can touch
Nor erring hand or paint brush hurt

That moment and such moments to come
Define your life and death confront

And even the shift in fickle sand
Would matter not if you once held my hand.

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