Pearls

We’ve been cultured like

clams, in deep sea beds,

in the hopes we’ll make

pearls.

Prodded to produce,

pearls of joy, of wisdom,

and of perfection. It’s what

we’re conditioned to do.

We’re farmed, made to choke on

the sandy grains of annoyance and turn

them into some priceless bauble

someone else can claim.

The pearls vary in quality,

in value, in size and weight, in

color and shine. Yet all are collected

for someone else to profit.

Failure to produce a pearl of

joy makes you an outcast, as if

finding or creating joy is just so

very easy; just something we’re to do.

Not creating a pearl of wisdom,

makes you a dunce, a dolt, a dimwit

and the open target of scorn and derision,

to be tossed away with the bad clams.

No pearl of perfection? The hardest of all,

doesn’t come easy for anyone, hardly anyone

at all. Yet, it’s still expected, wanted and

dreamed of as a commodity.

Joy, wisdom, perfection: are the pearls

we’re told to have. We’re told it’s what makes us

desirable, useful and respected, otherwise

there’s no purpose to us at all, what good are we?

Writhing beds of clams, producing cultured

pearls, spitting out the same old market flooding

trinkets, with regularity, with speed, with

dedicated diligence. Clockwork and punch clock.

The natural pearl, unforced, un-coerced,

un-molested, are true rare beauties.

They can be joy, wisdom or

perfection, there’s no blue-print.

Only that they’re pretty, an amazing

paint stroke of nature, a nifty trick of unmeasured

time, growing on a schedule un-monitored

by any clock or eye.

Natural pearls are highly prized and worthy

of awe, it’s why we covet them so,

and force the creation of our own through

the rigors of control and expectation.

The culture of expectation, to be something,

to be something great, to be something greater

than what you started with, to be something greater

than you started with or else.

Maybe that’s why, when we see the

natural pearl, we are so impressed, rapt in

it’s simple beauty of it doing just what it

does, without pressure of expectation.

I get tired of the sea bed, I get tired of

making pearls for others, I get worn out by joy,

wisdom, perfection and time. I just

want to swim, and eventually make my own.