This is the frantic spiral of critters destined 
To a pattern of exhaustion and death.
Having lost the scent of the guide,
Back follows front as front follows back
So the illusion of proceeding in a straight line
Is revealed only to those on a higher plane
As an endless circle. The samsaric wheel 
Turns until the last in line faints or,
Recognizing himself in the helpless form
Of the one who fell just before him, 
Breaks away to start a different shape.
                        

He has neither the guile of Odysseus 
Nor the daring of Prometheus.
He is the man with a wife
And two children in the brick home, 
Who takes the paper from the driveway 
And his coffee black. He reads the news 
Of the land with the degree of care
You would expect from a man
Who reads the news at the same time 
On the same chair every day.

When he leaves for work,
He kisses his wife goodbye on the doormat, 
Which he cleans only when it is dirty,
And she thinks it a competent kiss, 
Then quickly forgets about it.
And if it is icy outside, he does not fall. 
He will have remembered to salt the steps 
After learning of the storm the day before. 
And when he gets to work,
He arrives on time after an uneventful drive.

Though he does not know it, he is an ideal. 
The golden mean against which
We try the failings of ourselves and others. 
He does not breach a burning building.
He does not swim to save a drowning dog. 
He is not a hero. He is merely perfect.
He does not rankle the order of the world. 
He is the order of the world.
He dies an ordinary man. 
Even then, he outlives us all.
                        

We thought we were exempt. 
We thought we had been born 
Straight from the rib of Adam, 
That nothing had preceded us
But God himself and that nothing 
Would follow us but our new miracles.

We thought the wisdom
Of our fathers wrongly named, 
Misconstrued against our favor, 
That it had been founded on a series 
Of errors rationalized only
With the cost of time as wisdom.

We did not know that our parents 
Are not older than us,
That thirty-years is invisible 
On almost any timescale, 
That the days really are
As short as they promised.

We know this now and fear 
That something has been lost. 
We know not what, only that
It could never have been ours to find, 
That it was a lesson told in a story 
Not meant to be read, only written.

We will wait for those behind us 
To forget as we forgot.
We will plead with them
To remember as we were pleaded. 
A new man will write his story, 
Thinking it wholly original.