Opulence by mythsteps published on 2024-03-02T16:52:36Z OPULENCE The haphazard search of my youth led me to many educational places including that verdant rolling campus I came to on a Sunday afternoon. There, atop a hill a band played on an electric stage while young folk sprawled all over the lawn in carefully-ripped designer jeans. Bottles passed from hand to hand. Lips ravished a pig roasted on a spit. I responded to the scene with this one word: “Opulence” and maybe because I’d walked all day or maybe because highs are indeed contagious I soon became thick dizzy sluggish and slumped to the ground. But despite my dimness as I lay there, I could sense a tired malaise pervading the festivities. What could be the cause? Why didn’t we shimmy with the breezy trees? Or flow with the glowing clouds? The big beat did not move us. As children, we’d loved the winking wings of butterflies. But now we only liked. Perhaps we’d let our life of abundance numb us. In just a short time we’d taken in so much. Too much. Much too much. Shocked awake by the thought I feared for my life. Fighting fatigue, I stood and wobbled back down the hill. Yes, I learned a lesson that day. Nonetheless in this land of excess I usually forget to savor life in small sips. But when I stop and actually feel what I touch hear what I hear see what I see and taste what I taste— when I become aware of what I’m taking in and in so doing, deepen my experience of life… I feel a little scared because then this world and myself in it seem so strange. At such moments I feel alive in body and spirit. And know true opulence. Genre poetry