Skating on the Glass - Will Stratton

They took you by surprise, the ways that it had changed.

Right behind your eyes, like somehow you’d been framed.

«Yeah, that’s the new plateau,» it said.

«That's how you learn to see ahead.»

You had read the signs when you were just a boy.

When you’d get confused by momentary joy.

As beautiful as it could be, it took away your will to see ahead.

Skating on the glass like it was strong,

Impatient to be proven wrong,

Impatient to be where you’re not,

And where you get you ask what you’ve got.

You’d bend the world to your will,

Or you would learn to be

A bearing in a wheel in a dignified machine

Now the former is a joke,

And the latter is a koan

And somewhere in between is where you are,

Where you left and where you’re going.