Sand Castles and Dice ((-))

It's a little bit like that time
when your kid sister spent weeks convincing you
to please-oh-please be at the clearing in the woods -
and then she wasn't there.

Those same weeks spent convincing yourself that you don't care
but you were every bit as disappointed when she didn't show
to the please-oh-please clearing in the woods that day
as she was when she spent several vain weeks convincing you to go.

Or maybe it would be better to say that it's kind of like
how you spent years avoiding that boy dying in the hospital.
Convinced that he was positively dying to see you and
your excuse was the smell and the height and the building.

Years spent convincing yourself you had good reason not to go
even though you knew his sentence was death -- non-commutable.
Yet for all of the worry and fear and guilt your excuses provide
it's later learned that he didn't even remember who you were, anyway.

More than likely it's like that time where
you tried to build a sand castle by yourself on the beach,
and you sat there erecting palisades and arches but -
the sea kept coming and eroding, slowly but inexorably, the castle.

But you just kept trying because, "You can do anything,"
she said, and you had absolute faith; but then, slowly,
it occured to you: she knew of the sea! -
and knowing that she understood your futility didn't stop you.

That little boy, astride the sea, cannot be told his task is fruitless -
he was told he "Could do anything," and now stands in defiance of the tides,
because those words were so loaded with potential and hope and sunshine
that eternity becomes meaningless next to sand castles.

Maybe then it's kind of like after spending years explaining in action
you felt as though you had nothing but time when you are told,
"Just give it time," and you start to think about it a little bit
and begin to wonder if the hourglass is starting to run low.

Maybe it's difficult to worry time away when you're convinced
that Caesar is crossing the Rubicon and you're five days behind
knowing that haste just means you'll watch Rome [metaphorically] burn
exhausted and desperate instead of well-rested and lucid.

I'm not sure that Caesar approaching Rome is quite correct:
it's a lot more like the barbarians pouring into the city, looting and burning,
because even though you know Caesar is a noble sort of patriarch,
the barbarians have no such interest in preservation or sanctity.

In a very real sense it's like being told that the expression of hopes and dreams and goals
being smashed on the coastline by that same eternal tide as before
is petty melodrama, meaningless and devoid of value, destined
only to make things worse and cause more problems than anything.

Well some don't understand the fight; like the boy and his castle,
futility in light of the goal is meaningless, too, and maybe just maybe,
Some people believe in something so strongly that all futility does
is mean that there is a chance to beat the tides.

Sometimes, the Devil will back out of a bargain, convinced that
he's somehow getting burned, that your soul is somehow not worth the cost -
but what he and every suspicious and conscious dealer fails to see
is that sometimes people bargain with sincerety.

And that aside from all of the inevitable doubts as to motive,
once in awhile, on perhaps exceedingly rare occasion, some people sometimes
are willing to pass over everything
for another cast of the dice.