Oasis

Results are just a mirage
of an oasis you will never
reach the way you now
expect that you will
reach it. There are
pelicans there lost
on their way to the salt
water and ocean air.
Still you stare at them
and pray that they are real.
What do you feel out here
in all this uncertain sand
between the cacti and the snakes
that swallow unreasonable
amounts of their own venom?
Let’s look at it differently,
like a forest where a bear
is blocking off a stream
with just its body, and it is
eating all the fish carried
toward it by the never
ending current. Why swim
so fast just to have your
every fiber be consumed
by something out of your
control? Does the unprecedented
unfold at the moment of
the bloody burst, gnashed,
between the fangs of something
destined to be the punctuation
of a life spent carried forward
by a current built from every
broken plan?