Implements of Greater Fate
“They look like big, strong hands, don’t they?
I always thought that’s what they were.”
– The Rockbiter, Neverending Story
wisdom has a way of dismantling
definitions; time has a way of taking
it all away.
i woke with intent cradled in my palm,
a fragile, pregnant creature, hoping to give birth
to a new day.
like Cronus, i gathered the implements of my craft
and stepped out into this new yard, open eyed
for the harvest.
bounty. creation of something new from something
old, shearing the gold from green, shaping the pasture
in which i, my sons, and our guests could find peace.
the grating whirr of my electric mower
interrupted the solace of the morning, yes, but
i saw what lay before me. and it was good.
i settled into action,
sweat,
thoughtlessness.
when they leaped from the grass, from a hollow beneath
dead brown, it was as if the earth had emptied itself, giving birth
from nothing. absolutely nothing. i stood before magic.
the mower hiccupped. stalled out. i took a photo of them:
three tiny bunnies, the size of a mouse (undoubtedly the babies
of the large rabbit i’d seen earlier in the week).
and i smiled and i giggled as i chased them
from this place. drove them from their chosen home
(but just for a little while. a little while).
i settled into action, again,
and sweat,
and thoughtlessness.
so that when the mower jumped, coughed, choked,
my first thought was too late for his last. the fourth pup,
hidden, unseen (unseeable) still in that same hollow.
until me. until i came, not in the power of Cronus, but
with the death and the cessation of time, of, and for, his forebearer,
Chronos.
blessed are we, above all creation, perhaps, with choice
and free will. but what i learned, as i stared at what could not be
seen (any more) as a rabbit,
what i felt, between the twisting and visceral gordian knots
of my stomach, was this: we are not always what we wish
to be, to do.
sometimes we are made more. made less. by powers
larger than ourselves. sometimes
we are the implements
of greater fate.
