I once asked a friend

What would it feel like to have no pain

To be like you where the sun traced each day?

She said; I know it isn’t strength makes me able

There is no secret to it

Just the bird song wirings of my brain and yours

A legacy begun before our birth

Run through the veins of our ancestors

Coupled with the manufacturer of our creation

For surely, how you are brought into this world

And the good regard or lack of, when you do not yet know

Those furnishings are the rock on which foundations lie

Some shift beneath uneasy sand and lime

While others endure centuries without a murmur

Those are not choices or fancies of the soul

Though this world would have us believe

Sadness a mere choice, happiness a metal against the tempers of life

It is not so

Anymore than the runt survives, whilst the healthiest may perish

Chance, fate, fortune, the nimble grace of luck and loss

Whether your basket is found floating on water

Or crushed against stone in a deluge of bitterness

What we cannot abide in life, what turns us desperately to Gods and monsters

Is the unfairness, the lack of control, the way dice are forever rolling

It is what you do while you hold that sorrow in your heart, that counts

Where you lay your mercy, how you reach to others

Even as the world profits from cruelty and coldness

And you are laughed at for your unfashionable tenderness

They may not remember when you are gone

Or even visit you in their memories once

But if you walked with kindness, then you shone

Then you shone

Even as you wept

12 Replies to “Even as you wept”

  1. YES! Though life and fate be unkind, fickle, unfair, even cruel, we need not be so, need not become cold as winter’s bitterest blast.

  2. My entire life I’ve been told “you’re too nice” “too sensitive” “big hearted” but it always felt like a criticism not a compliment. I want neither compliments or criticism. I yam what I yam. Nothing else makes sense. Certainly not the penchant for coldness.

  3. Alas, from a lot of people entranced by the illusions of a dog-eat-dog competitive world, it is a criticism, or at least a warning. Several of my biggest “mistakes” in this life as those people define success were in some “excess” of generosity or a Mi casa su casa. tendency. I wouldn’t trade those “mistakes” for any materialistic “success” that came by being cold.

  4. You’ve written my manifesto for me! I could sing it from the rooftops. And I love “bird song wirings” so much…

  5. Well I must be doing something right then … and it honors me infinitely to touch you in any way with my words

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