Tower of Babel

From the top ledge he calls down

for another brick,

for another bucket of mud

but the rope remains limp.

Gone the art of exchange,

that raw material for love.

In its place the attempt

to convince with words

no longer making sense.

It is no light thing to breach

the cauldron from directly

beneath its innocuous  swing.

Blinded Samson prays

between the carved columns

of our competence

as the loud music masks

the shaking in the walls.

And Icarus on clever wings

whips his silent shadow

along the ribbed fin

of Moab’s sandstone Babel

rising  from the desert floor

like an old sword unsheathing

from its scabbard, agile

and poised  to swing wide

and slice open the sky,                                                                           

to spill its hot oil

on the scurrying scorpion,

on the unsuspecting serpent

caught asleep in its coil.

Tower of Babel, one of the several sandstone fins that make up the Courthouse Towers of Arches National Monument, affords this musing on the perennial temptation for humans to reach beyond and into the realm not given for humans to meddle.  Is it an affront to the modern human to suggest that there can even exist such a realm?  I think it is.  But branches in the very tops of trees are not known for holding the weight of the those who desire to swing there.  And we should be very careful indeed to puncture the cauldron hanging directly over our heads when we are not at all sure what is about to flood out! 

Photo Credit:  Ambarry1975 Pixabay.com:  CCO Creative Commons license.