Settles in the crevices around my nails.

Once delicate and manicured,

I clawed my way to the top of skyscrapers,

Swayed, powerful, above the streets,

Stared down the machines of human ingenuity,

Mastered and created the systems that

Powered those machines.

Power–the machine that once drove me,

Unmanicured and wide-eyed,

To abandon brown earth tamped gently against soft roots,

And climb ladders in circles with powerful men.

Men who intoxicated me

With dark whiskey and bouncing cigars,

Smart talk and full lungs,

And I have known what it is to be powerless,

A seedling with broken roots

Searching for a better piece of dirt

In a jungle of concrete,

Blinded by metal and glass.

But I have not known, until now,

The absence of power,

The simple bliss of being a part of the earth rather than

Apart from the earth.

And I do not know, even now,

A way to be beyond that oppressive boot,

That zealous drive to climb,

The dizzying height of pursuit.