the meaning of wealth in the new economy (2004)
"Wealth is the means by which we fulfill our desires."
- Interview with Stan Davis & Chris Meyers,
Harvard Business School Publishing.
This is when the cat stretches and springs, and how puppy eyes
ask you favours you resent but relent to.
This is why the rainforest expends its fund of seed
as December comes, bearing fistfuls of rain.
Consider the lilies of the field, the wide hunger which
pulls you forward, the lust to work, earn, mate, the same
gravity that binds water to sky, impels bird to song and brood, both.
Remember the electric twitch of nerve
as skin kissed skin for the first time ever?
An infant's gurgle and squeal, the kind
that brings parents running for a glimpse of joy,
and willing to pay for it with love?
Nothing but riches: between the leafy congregation of trees
and the echo of a single prayer down empty aisles,
each step you take away from childhood, thirsting for road.
You have always known this bounty, the means
to open a window and let the morning in for all it's worth.
Through the doubling and doubling of years
of weight, of sorrow; there's always that one thing
you know you can never have, which keeps you alive:
You hoard a little every time you put aside, in sleep,
your daily dying. In your dreams of being free,
everything you've always wanted
to be, you walk smiling and whole,
away from the infinite riches of the world.
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