The Fear of Creation

In trepidation of a vast river,

In hesitant contemplation of taking a plunge,

A timid soul cossets itself.

Artists we are,

And makers of magic. But making takes waking,

And this soul would rather sleep.

It muses, sleepily, lazily,

“What's one, two, a hundred drops

Of my own magic

In this vast, ageless flow?

How dare I make a difference here

and not be swallowed up?”

So it dozes, fearing change.

Shy of shining, it dulls itself

With uneasy acceptance of obscurity.

And in the empty hours,

The man wonders what he was made for.

Yet his soul knows

That he was made to make.

This is what his soul fears,

That in making,

In joining with the colossal tide of intellect,

it will make no mark,

But sink, unknown, unseen,

To the bottom,

And thus be unfulfilled.

A timid soul thinks, finally,

That a riverside slumber

Is as good as sinking,

For it is failure without endeavour.

Then up it rises,

And then,

It dives.

©Shalom