I drop a pebble in the pond
and watch a gnat
heaved toward the shore
by forces it does not understand,
a two-centimeter-high ripple
carrying the creature and its tiny fears

the same way those baffled humans
got swept one mild Sunday morning
from fishing villages and tourist resorts
into the wide, pitiless sea,

the same way we are all carried
by the rolling tide of history

except that—

we are the gnats
who build boats

and when asked by a voice
whispering down from the high country
to do something desperately different

to set ourselves apart
from the blind cacophony of chaos

we have been known
to build

arks.

– Scott Waters