I am in progress, a contrast to who I was, the prelude to who I will be,

A wall of canvas, being caressed into a masterpiece by  His brushstrokes.

In the Potter’s hands I am a vessel-to-be, the future of the lump of clay you see,

And I am becoming like Him as more of me splatters on the wheel’s spokes.

I am wayward and unwieldy, but His patience remains untried, He is eternally kind,

And in His godliness, He acknowledges my humanity, keeping my frailty in mind.

I often forget His benefits, I rave and I rant till He reminds me of His greatness,

Then I am awed into silence by a weight of blessings that leaves me weightless.

I grow proud, carried away on the flood of my achievements, little, self-important me,

I turn my back on the Giver and worship the gifts, before the wrong gods, I bend the knee.

Humility comes with a trial, but I am not humiliated, just restored to His Presence,

With love, He teaches me once again that without Him, life would have no essence.

I bow before the God of weak beings, the Savior of the downtrodden and castoffs,

He who finds a use for the useless, a greater use than the useful are worthy of.

I am the wick upon which His spirit-fire burns, my mortal self consumed by the divine,

Yet I remain, for I carry a portion of His permanence, the ‘how’ of which cannot be divined.

The end begins at dawn, earth kissed by the warm probing rays of a euphoric sun. Humanity is roused from its fitful slumber by the frantic calls of enterprise. Business, good or bad, can hardly wait. The timepieces are primed and ready, ticking agelessly yet counting the ages. 

All eyes on the clock, hearts racing along, life is lived without living, like turning a book’s pages without reading. The hours pass, for most too slowly, for the minority too swiftly. Beyond the stratifying hues of society, the few and the many are the same. Goals are different only from a distance - the lives of all men are possessed by the quest for reward. 

Man is like wood, painstakingly sawn and sanded, yet only for an incendiary purpose - in the pursuit of happiness, mankind employs unnatural means and sets itself alight when in friction with the ideal. This ignition is spell-binding, as only a destructive conflagration’s magical start can be.

But the beginning is only what it is, a brief introduction to the end, a moment of stationary respite in the storm called perpetual motion. Nothing to be dwelt upon, for to linger is to invite disappointment.