When I think of progress,

I see men bounding on the moon

In a ballet of awkward beauty,

And I hear the laughter of children

Bouncing on the playground

During a recess potato-sack race,

Moved forward by an unassuming bliss.

 

Which makes me wonder what it was like

To live in a country that still believed in itself,

When a president promised the moon

Because it was there,

And taught us the cost of audacity:

Apollo was a capricious god

Who claimed Grissom as sacrifice

For safe passage through the skies,

And courageous Camelot could only last

In the hope of what we could be.

 

Then, I imagine my daughter dancing

At day’s end where the Pacific sings

A swishing song along the shore.

The golden air leaves a salty

Kiss upon her cheeks

As she leaps from one ledge to another

Across a tide pool’s watery waltz,

Where seagrass and starfish sway in ecstasy;

She somehow slips and slices her foot

So I cradle her in my arms

And mend her wound

And tend her tears,

In my mind I hear an echo,

One small step…One giant leap…

 

Finally, I understand that progress,

Beneath the beauty and the bliss

And the audacity that moves us forward,

Is the inevitability of motion and pain.

 

 

©Jedidiah Paschall – January 21, 2019