The Conductor

The Conductor

The world feels safe when I believe I can shape it,
when I stand upon the mountaintop,
conductor’s wand in hand,
orchestrating the world into harmony.

For I am the one, uniquely suited
to set each life upon its perfect course.
The mouse, for instance, who lingers too long
in the cold crook of a broken branch.

No, little one, I whisper,
your happiness is a burrow, soft and warm,
safe beneath the roots where the earth hums.
And behold! The mouse is happy.

Or is he?
Perhaps he would rather sleep beneath the stars,
bathed in silver light, the wild night singing to him,
even if, now and then,
a storm tears through his fragile shelter.

Who am I to say?

And so, as I lower my conductor’s wand,
I see what I couldn’t see:
the world does not need arranging.
The wind bends the trees without my hand.
The river carves its own way home.
And the only power I have,
the only power I have ever had,
is to love it all as it is.