The Game
This poem was written about twenty years ago, during a season of my life when I felt pulled in every direction — torn between choices, beliefs, and the invisible hands shaping my path. Some of its lines once appeared as a featured quote at a Canadian church, where I first shared it with their community. They embraced it deeply, and for a while, its words lived on their digital wall and exterior sign as a quiet reflection of faith and struggle. Today, I share The Game again, not as a fragment of the past but as a completed piece — one that has waited patiently to fulfill its purpose. Its meaning has matured with me. What once was written out of tension and confusion now stands as a mirror of understanding, faith, and surrender to the greater mind that moves us all.
Federico Botero
11/8/20251 min read
The Game
(by Federico Botero)
Life is like a chess game between good and evil.
We are the pieces,
and which piece to be is up to us.
Two giants face each other,
mirroring the crossroads
of godly and devilish lives,
a battlefield ready, equal in strength.
The pawns are the crowd, short-sighted,
moving on crippled legs,
one small step at a time.
They move boldly at first,
but soon decay into fear and doubt.
The king and queen sit together,
protected by those willing to die first.
Their castles are distant kingdoms,
rigid and proud,
unbending as their stone walls.
They hear no reason
and learn nothing from the hands that played before.
Then there is the horse.
You either know how to ride it, or you don’t.
It twists your thoughts
with the rhythm of hooves on the road,
veering left and right,
jumping over anything and anyone.
The bishop moves in predictable angles,
a prisoner of symmetry,
black or white, right or wrong.
Poor soul, nothing in this world
is that simple or certain,
not life, nor taxes.
This battle can last forever,
leave nothing behind, or just enough.
But in the end,
it does not matter what piece we choose to be.
I have seen games won by pawns
and lost by queens.
What truly matters
is whose hand is moving you
and whose mind is watching the game,
the mind that sees beyond every move,
the one that knows
that a single pawn’s step to the left or right
can mean victory far down the line.
As my thoughts discern,
any piece, regardless of its strength or grace,
is equally blind
without the mind that moves it.