No One Can do Everything

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Recorded Reading: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmgqimhn0zv4d8b/no%20one%20can%20do%20everything%20.mp3?dl=0

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No One Can do Everything

Has there ever been a time
We don’t think we could have done better
Reasoned more from random rhyme
Obeyed morality’s true letter?

Looking back, oh, looking back
On all in life that’s gone before
We each see in ourselves some lack —
We might have done a little more

A little other, little bother
Little diff’rent, little less
Some sweet sister, some good brother
Some grandmother’s life to bless

The absolution meditation on
Humility bring
Is this reas’nable conviction:
No one can do everything

No one can do everything
All of this and all of that
No one can know everything
Only wear their own true hat

And just as you, as all of we,
Sometimes sacrifice must make —
A seeming impossibility
But a course we yet must take

In midst of universal wrong
Somehow to create a right
‘Mongst the shadows hereamong
Maintain, and represent, delight

Defend the helpless, serve the weak
Stand for light against the dark
Give voice to the voiceless meek
Keep alive compassion’s spark —

So others, also, find themselves
Into conundrums hurled
Unsuspected by ourselves
In their outer world

And since we do now realize
It was but flawed ourselves could be
(No reason to that self despise
‘Twere but a note in symphony

The mighty swelling chorus
Of manifestation in),
We give this gift to all of us
We finally begin

To let that blaming back and forth,
But mostly backward, go
Releasing spirits yet of worth
To other realms, to other grow

For what may be their destinies
Except to serve where we cannot
By their personal odyssies
Unique enablement begot?

When we have learned to shrug, and smile
In resolutions genuine
Allowing in a little while
New growth of happiness begin

Without desperate clinging
Leach or lizardlike unto
Whomever you think’s bringing
Yourself — only yourself — back to you

You’ll gift yourself that self, and, when
That self accepts, you’ll see
Clear, first your own, and happy then
All our acceptability

So you weren’t perfect — they weren’t either!
So they weren’t perfect — neither were we!
Give ourselves, and them, a breather
Leaving them, and ourselves, free

Enabled by new understandings
Brought us all by that wild flow
Forward look to happ’ier landings
As through life’s adventures go

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Among us, poets are ill paid. In order to continue her work, this one currently lives in her minivan, on an income of a fraction of our nation’s poverty level. If her work has moved, enabled or uplifted you, your contribution to this effort may be made at: https://www.gofundme.com/kx4xka-are-you-a-patron-of-the-arts

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