Ball by Luke Keioskie

The ball started rolling long ago. 

 

No one knows who started it, nor why, how or when. As for where…no one could even imagine where the ball would take us.  But we all agreed that once it started to roll, there was no stopping the ball.

 

At first the ball made us step back.  We had never seen, heard, known its like before.  But we are curious, aren’t we?  All too soon we were following the ball.  It was a wonder to us.  So we let it roll.

 

The ball rolled and we had dreams we’d never dreamt before.

 

Some amongst us followed the ball closely.  Too close, others said, but this didn’t stop the followers.  They were like the ball itself, heading somewhere no one had ever been.  We couldn’t stop them.

 

The ball rolled and put fire in our hands.

 

The ball rolled and we walked on water.

 

Some amongst us tried to stop the ball, do not follow the false, they cried.  And once, long ago now, their cries almost halted what had begun.  But then we would hear of the ball rolling elsewhere, in different places, and after a while the words of the few were left behind.   Some of us wonder where we’d be now, if we’d only listened then.

 

The ball rolled and we took to the sky.

 

The ball rolled and all the world was ours.

 

There was nowhere the ball didn’t go.  Even the far places, places we thought the ball couldn’t reach, would never reach, weren’t far enough away.  The ball came, rolling, always rolling, and soon what was far became near.

 

The ball rolled, gathering speed.

 

Some began to question the ball.  The followers, those who had given their lives to the ball’s endless motion, would try to answer our questions but the answers only made sense to the followers.  They offered questions as answers.  What could we say to that?

 

The ball rolled and rolled and rolled.

 

The ball rolled and made meaning of the nonsense.

 

The ball rolled and the present became the future.

 

The ball was our leader.  And to this day we still follow our ball.

 

But some of us, only a few, choose not to follow.  There are those of us who know where our ball is headed.  There are those who see what is left in the wake of our rolling ball, the damage its rolling has wrought.

 

We wonder, after so long, if our ball can even be stopped.

 

So we wish, we seek, we warn and we think.  We wait for the day when our ball will reach too far and finally stop.  And we hope, by then, that’s it not too late.

 

But for now our ball rolls on…

 

…and on and…

 

…on.

– Luke Keioskie