Momentum gives you balance, for as short as an instant or as long as a moment.
Classic credo of the wheel, of progress.
In a world
Where it is harder to give than it is to take
Where thirst persists while lawns are slaked,
Momentum can give you balance but only for so long as a moment.
Bottlenecks and tight squeezes do still occur,
When time will freeze to inspect if you are sure
Of the form of your stance, or whether thoughts are pure,
It stalls to a stop to see if you can endure.
The protracted second. That mendicant beckoning to direct your Reckoning.
More often than not, its just a bump in the road
A shift of the load that you have set into mode,
But dont expect the princess to come with the toad,
What is bought sometimes cannot be sold.
Yet still, momentum gives you balance.
Like how a mantra maintains its trance,
Or when you know someone’s soul in a glance
Or the eternity of one final dance.
But does that mean I should become like some roving wind,
Moving through rooms to maintain a measure from Doom?
And what shall I carry? Must I gulp my tea? Can’t I tarry? Won’t you finish your coffee, at least?
Will my saddlebags sway to splay me across the street like some display of defeat?
will a dream deterred or that Road Not Taken hang on my conscience like a heavy load, and then explode? How many more miles to go before I sleep?
How long is this road when even the horizon cannot know?
And when will the fear of happenstance, or chance itself scare my Self into destruction? At this speed,
I feel I need the thought of obstruction to steer me in the right direction. In fact, upon inspection, I am certain that surprise begets seduction.
Somewhere, there is dysentery in my decision tree
And Brittle, blasted rocks are enough to steal control, cold-cocked by piers and marine docks
to slow me to a stop. You see,
sand is surreal: it splashes yet stings dry
And has suffered the slowest death from the breath of the moon in the sky
pushing the oceans of the Earth.
And this motion, carried to its fullest extent,
is spent on stones that cannot parry their relentless torment.
And this persists until each stone has been divided by colliding.
No longer itself yet still something binding.
A potion of Time itself, distinct like a diamond.
Such Cause and Effect,
so that even when you reflect, each predilection is correct by its select dimension.
So when you hit that ditch, sandpit, or you age decrepit,
You will react or relax, collide or collapse, abide or simply prolapse.
And for all the time elapsed, could you say you missed a second?
Do you need a second glance?
Still they say, momentum gives you balance, to break bonds and to push borders.
Where Lords of Order and Mothers and Fathers are not welcome to court
the Edge, the choice between Now and Later, where the voice of Thunder demands
At every corner, Now? now? Or later?
Hunter chased The Edge down by bombing a mountain.
But not even he, with his intense violence and his gunman gusto,
Could touch It: that moment beyond balance, the instant after trance, the fall from a failing stance, or the dying notes of a final dance.

by Michael Cody Clarke
All Rights Reserved