Dan Williams

Complacency Dares

Before the anger is finally gone

the promises will all have come undone

till only faltering remains.

Starlight will have lost its glisten

no bride will speak, no child will listen;

what is still to come will likely stay the same.

Before the wiring vows came all unwound,

before catastrophe had made a sound,

and long before his blindness came;

he was a clever weakly smiling man

who understood why the child ran,

but disliked him all the same.

Coat sewn of joy only she could see,

contentment smiling so elusively;

complacency dared.

But the dice fell poorly, Betrayal walked

his friends grew silent, enemies stalked;

the child still stared.

The ball was tossed too fast and low;

he had never started, so could not go,

and his replacement won.

He turned to see if somehow she would look,

but his carelessness had closed that book;

the child was gone

So before the rage can be diminished,

the turn completed, the anger finished;

the pitying first must cease.

This suffering can be controlled,

he is not dead, he is merely old;

the child must be released.