Bait and switch
In the art and science of deception
There is a classic con trick
Known as bait-and-switch;
The mark thinks she's buying something of great value
which the con has shown off to her at enormous length.
The con wraps it up in an attractive box with fancy ribbons.
When the mark gets home she undoes the ribbons and discovers the con has cheated her...
There is nothing inside the box.
How many of spring's great deals
Turn out to be winter's sad delusions?
But in truth this betrayal is just a misunderstanding.
Winter does always follow eventually from spring
And if you are paying attention you will see that coming.
Spring's "bargain" is predicated on winter's payment of interest -
I'm only able to offer you spring now, because the winter sales are not far off.
If you read the small print in the accompanying leaflet
you will have been expecting it since at least October.
Of course there are alternatives:
You can follow the swallows south for its summer -
chase the spring back and forth between hemispheres.
Or for a more relaxed approach, settle - somewhere temperate:
There is a secret text that rarely makes it onto the flyer -
At least not so as people notice.
Yes winter always follows spring, but so too spring always follows winter:
The greenery that became autumn's brown mulch
and then winter's black dirt turns out to be
the compost for spring's new life.
We go round so as to arrive at the place where we started.
This is not defeat... it is spirit's ultimate victory...
simply to notice who we have always been.
The one that survived winter death and burst into summer fire,
The one that I am never not -
Not the budding flower - not the falling autumn leaf.
Who I am always, have always, will always be.
I know the place is different
just because
I notice that it is the same;
All over the landscape of autumn's rotting language
Spring joy spurts from the hardness of winter's deadly irony.
The trickster's empty box,
in the wink of an eye,
turns out to contain god's final ecstasy.
Poetry by Andrew Bindon
Read 608 times
Written on 2009-11-13 at 00:34
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
