I ENVY

Sometimes
I want to talk
Of people that are
Monumentally
More momentous than I.
Clever, Eminent.
So how do I,
Dullard in comparison,
Explain
How what they are
And what they do
Expands my mind
And fills my heart,
Enriches my life?
The things they do
That seem so simple,
So easy
For their great talent
Or intellect, to do,
I envy.

Sometimes,
I want to be able
To leave a mark
Indelible
Like theirs, and
beautiful.
Casting a shadow
Into the future,
Touching other lives,
Minds and hearts.

This I can't have
They reach to the unknown
That separates
Them from us
Me from them.
I wish my words
Could paint a picture
That cuts
With the sharpest beauty
Into infinity.
I envy, yet adore.

I rage
At my incompetence
Yet wonder
Awestruck
At what they do, and how.
A mind, a universe,
Glimpsing shadows, storms,
The like unknown,
That births beauty
And gives it to me
In strange disguise,
So I must think
And learn
And thus explodes within
Enlightenment
Comprehension of beauty
Perception of other,
Understanding of self
And of why
I envy.

I wish
These human gods
Would take my hand
And guide me
Down the tracks
Their mind has gone,
So my understanding
Is complete
And unafraid
Of substance missed
Of meaning warped
To my own design.
I cannot be like them,
They should not be like me.
However elementary,
I am me
But a me aware,
A me, ardent to learn
The magnificence of difference
Of us all.

Dawn McDonald
© June 2004

Midi: "Symphony No.9 in D minor Opus 125"
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Transcribed 1865 for Piano by Franz Liszt
(Adagio molto e cantabile)
Sequencer: Tom Janzen

Graphic: Confucian Monn Vase