The Strange Bequest

There was a man, a slim man,

whose head was bedecked

with a white cloud

and whose eyes saw dreams

he could not articulate.

He sat one day staring into space

and when I questioned him, he said,

`I am sitting and watching the grass grow.’

I hesitated far too long

and have lived to regret it.

I wish the courage had been mine

to have asked him

to share his dreams with me.

For he bequeathed to me

a mind that does not rest.

I have the thought that his faher

and father before him

wrestled the same misty vision

which now is mine to set in motion.

I question this strange bequest,

for I have not

the staunch heart required

to lay to rest my ancestor’s anguish.

Papa, I plead now,

to replace my heart with hot ore,

inject me with a vial

of celestial courage

and fuse my spine with tempered steel.

There is so little time.