Tangled Web

TANGLED WEB

 H. W. Bryce

“What a tangled web we weave when at first

we start to deceive.”* Learning to Dissemble

at our fathers’ knees to bulldoze giant trees

and leave a pile of tangled roots and thirst.

But through it all, there is a chink of light

that lets the sun shine through upon the dust,

reveals the rust that sits upon our blemish—

IF we are wise enough to heed that light.

There is beauty in the pyre of death

as phoenix flames renew fire of the soul

to burn on as shepherds for the fire of good

to fight for right, even to your dying breath.

Life should be more than a pile of rubble.

Let us resolve our efforts to redouble.

— —

My sincere thanks to Xenia Tran at www.whippetwisdom.com

For her remarkable photgraph and haibun, and for her generous

Permission to use this picture, which inspired this poem.

* NOTE— The quote “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive” is not by Shakespeare but by Walter Scott in his poem “Marmion.” It refers to the effects of lying and how as one lie leads to more the lies multiply, and we become trapped in the dishonesty.

(Alas Humans!)