Like Life

Life is only understood in reverse order,
philosophically,
we trust the disasters and miracles
as necessary catastrophic shifts
and dramatic scene changes
the curtain drops
the Act is up.

When the world as we knew it
once hovered in equipoise-
disintegrated and crumbled before
our thin-soled shoes,
we thought of tides
and how they rip the earth
from undertow,
and leave us
to balance
less.

As chaos is to entropy,
we stand our ground despite the speed
of orbits and bullets
hoping to break the spell
of wait.

Pen and ink drawing by Henry Fuseli (1741-1845) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.