The Human Condition in Eight Stanzas

We are part of a family tree
that is more than a metaphor.

The birds feed off our limbs.

And besides, this illness 
called the Future cannot
remain hidden for long.

Perhaps more than an enemy, 
we are something less than that as well.

Everything presented to us, 
we can not seem to find. Everything
given to us, we can not seem to hold.

Yet selected by the elements nevertheless, 
a dot on the satellite map gleaming like 
a glacial tarn in the Rockies. 

Swept away by an endless string of half breaths.
That electrical charge.  A cold rising dew.
Just early snow on tumbled rocks.

A geological paradox if nothing else.

George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more. 

See all his poems on Tea House here.


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