The Machine

Deep beneath: A machine, vast in scope
Left by those that came before
Ancient wisdom written in levers and gears
Its built-in purpose now ground to a stop

No hieroglyphic key is needed to understand
That turns this, which pushes on that
A function plain as a beating heart
But the massive cogs all clogged with sand

Despite the age and rust and friction
Seize the rods and push with all your strength
Push with arms overextended
Push with feet that slip from underneath
Keep pushing, though the mechanism barely engages
Keep pushing, though it stops again every time

Would that this machine were steel
Found in cyclopean depths of pulp adventure
Not the wispy stuff of culture
Whose smiths can deny it was ever meant to work at all

This in another poem that I wrote in order to share with my niece in our weekly zoom chats. When I write prose fiction my normal genre is fantasy, so I tried to incorporate some fantasy type environment imagery into this one, as I felt the scenery as metaphor thing worked well for me in my previous piece.

(Header image is this image from Pixabay)