trivial events in non-trivial systems

wisdom is the alchemical product of
knowledge and pain
over time.
lots of time.

it’s a long walk in a circle.
it’s the realization that you will repeat
your mistakes, and in realizing, firmly
resolve otherwise, which promptly-broken
resolution is of course a mistake
repeatedly made.
it’s the terror that your children will not
merely repeat your mistakes, but will make
worse ones, and that you’ll stand there
baffled at the door at four in the
morning, the shock of course
rehearsed hundreds of times in each of the
hundreds of nights before.

there is nothing new under
this old sun, as they say.
god you’d think you’d learn.
one grows generally towards understanding
in the long run I think that must be true
but meandering runs the road thereto.

it’s a break through the wall
after years of arduous chipping and
tunneling into space
antecedent to another larger wall.
long ago nature in its dynamic brilliance
allowed over time for longer-legged bipeds
to traverse walltop-to-top in single strides
like circus performers.
or it’s nice to imagine it might have been so.
if it can be imagined to have been,
maybe it can be imagined to repeat.
but it’s also easy enough to imagine
a terribly tall wall.

god you’d think you’d learn
but you’d be wrong.
ha ha
ha
you’d be wrong.