PRIDE AND THE FALL
Popes and presidents,
bishops, professional
athletes, those on pedestals
or at head tables – those with
fat wallets and svelte bodies,
those who appear in People Magazine,
those who love to compare themselves
to the overweight or over old,
those who look down on those
with dented and crumbling cars,
or those in bleacher seats,
or in back benches at church,*
or on cement sidewalk seats
playing music, begging for a buck.
Beware if you become top heavy.
Beware of beauty or I.Q. or power
or cash or titles or the easy.
A heavy head can snap a neck.
Pride can brings us back
down to the gravity of ground,
the earth, the humus from which
we were all formed from. If none
of this scares us, there is always
death, the heady humble crumble.
bishops, professional
athletes, those on pedestals
or at head tables – those with
fat wallets and svelte bodies,
those who appear in People Magazine,
those who love to compare themselves
to the overweight or over old,
those who look down on those
with dented and crumbling cars,
or those in bleacher seats,
or in back benches at church,*
or on cement sidewalk seats
playing music, begging for a buck.
Beware if you become top heavy.
Beware of beauty or I.Q. or power
or cash or titles or the easy.
A heavy head can snap a neck.
Pride can brings us back
down to the gravity of ground,
the earth, the humus from which
we were all formed from. If none
of this scares us, there is always
death, the heady humble crumble.
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2009
* Cf. Luke 18: 9-14
Tap, tap the pictures on top of the flowers
Tap, tap the pictures on top of the flowers
in St. Mary's Garden here in Annapolis
with your cursor to get a close-up
of what I'm talking about.
1 comment:
Tapped the picture and your poem said it all.
Thanks for bringing that image and words into our hearts and minds .
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