This one makes me laugh. If you only get into the adolescent extremism, you'll smash--smash yourself, smash stuff around you, smash, smash, smash. Smash enough, and it will get into you, get on you, go through you. When things go through you, they point beyond you. But if you like to smash stuff, commit 100%. If you don't, your life will fracture. It's better to figure out how to grow than work on smashing and hoping for a lucky happenstance to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. For all that, one of the prayers that remains with me is, "Give us this day our daily leap…for life is not life without joy."
Sometimes, I admit,
I forget
the number of shipwrecks
I have engineered,
the number of life-collections
strewn about on
the number of living coral reefs,
the number of waves washing
those reefs,
carrying collectibles
away.
I forget how many times
I have crashed my plane into
mountainsides, hilltops,
deltas, icecaps,
smashed in the morning,
smashed in the evening,
smashed in the dark--
no witnesses surviving.
I know
I never
counted
the pieces.
How many times did I walk away
no worse for wear,
rough around edges,
wearing souvenirs
in my skin and the expression
around my eyes?
How many times wandering
in from the wilderness
to the question, "My God! What happened
to you?"
How-many? blends into this crazy mutter,
insane repetition, this madman praying,
"There's no god but You, O God,
and give us this day our daily leap
for life is lived in dying to this world,
this world is heaven for those with faith,
and faith is one moment's daily bread, but
tomorrow cannot live on bread alone
for life is not life without joy."
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz