Wishes Overgrow Dogma

Superstition is religion
As the instinctive expression
Of longing and anxiety,

Between the world as it has been
Experienced and the same world
As it might be, strangely altered.

Big religions are instructions,
Machines that stride across the world
Like awkward puppet elephants,

Impressive and scary to watch,
A little flimsy in the joints,
Stepping on the superstitions

That will sprout back like weeds between their toes
And climb, like vines, the legs of their machines.