To follow the law to the letter
is a wholesale repression
beginning with writing down
the rules of the game,
to state and proclaim that
sand never leave the sandbox
even though the same sand
was purloined from nature,
corralled and given a purpose
while sand on the beach
beckons and invites us
to explore a kind of wild west
where sand castles rise
beside soupy mudpies,
a freedom in creation
with no boxy borders.
Efforts to sustain or cling
are temporary at best
while the tide licks
at the foundations
of these castles built
of impermanence itself,
form inevitably collapsing
when nap time beckons,
the sea herself a reckoning,
nature restoring order
on the limitations
we attempt to impose,
she levels the playing field
with indifferent regard
while mankind hoists
on its own petard.
—
note: “Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is lifted (“hoist”) off the ground with his own bomb (a “petard” is a small explosive device), and indicates an ironic reversal, or poetic justice.
