When Peril Shifts
an almost poem
POETRY
When Peril Shifts
An almost poem
There is relief at the moment peril ends and damage begins. Qualified relief. Up to then, it is all anticipation, and when danger turns to harm the anticipation is over: the fight has begun. There is simplicity in this impact. Once hazard shifts to injury, an absolute logic comes into play, it offers a semblance of a break from nuance. There is no subtlety in the struggle to survive. Clarity is the only and inadequate compensation for fears becoming present tense destruction.
Rolling devastation brings with it a new horror: chronic loss. An ever-widening wound conducts the grinding of circumstance. Without chance of respite, nor pause to heal, or even catch a breath, good evaporates in the face of persistent trauma.
Spreading decline seeps into cracks desolating solace. Calamity displaces hope as it ravages all. Wreck rules the day. Endurance splinters.
Where is the bottom? Surely the void itself must be at hand it seems until new layers of disintegration are discovered and extinguished in a breath.
Without relent, expectation becomes only memory.
Without a bottom, progress loses meaning.
And there’s the gift. Unbound by planning, the only thing near possible is new. The new and unrecognized, unimagined and unknown, is all that remains. No promise of safety, no faith in what has no reputation. For like new life, it is wholly unwritten and unconstrained. Both deep good and bad threaten.
And here we are again, with anticipation, only without context for expectation. Again in the same place yet without any sameness at all.
Belief has no bearing here.
Infinite possibility in both oblivion and actualization has arrived.
The future unexplored beacons, and makes only one guarantee: nothing like what was will be again.
© Copyright August 20, 2020, David August, all rights reserved davidaugust.com
David August is an award-winning actor, acting coach, writer, director, and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run, it’s now out on Amazon (affiliate link). He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. His artwork has been used and featured by multiple writers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners, and others to express visually. Off-screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies, and major studios, helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the Internet.
