you spoke a world into a shape,
a clean equation,
an escape
from chance’s tyranny.
the claim
you made,
you said,
bore logic’s name.
the drought is done,
the flood is here,
a perfect system,
sharp and clear.

but what of those who breathe the mud,
who trace the cracks left by the flood?
who sift the wreckage,
stone by stone,
of truths the current overthrew?
the burden is not to be right,
but to stand watch throughout the night
and answer for the river’s course,
for its impersonal,
brutal force.

it is to count the altered shores,
the sunken fields,
the shattered doors,
and not to say,
“the rain was good,”
but,
“this is where the levee stood.
this is the weight the water bore,
and here,
the new and fragile shore.”

the proof is not in the first spark,
the brilliant thought that found its mark,
but in the ashes and the dew,
in what the storm has made of you,
and in the long and patient gaze
that meets the future’s silent haze,
and bears the weight of what you threw,
the hurricane that is your proof.