Common Guilt

Washed in the news of the world,
Dark times and dark deeds.
Hearts break when nature's flippant hand
takes a thousand home.

Attuned to flickering networks
that replaced hearth life,
We absorb real, and imagined, sorrows,
and one good deed.

The watcher's response?
A common guilt is woven.
Surely, love would reach out to ease.
Love must know how to act.

So many covet a clear response.
It is not granted.
A strange silence ensues.
More of everything unfolds, and yet no word.

Listen. Do not look to be seen
AS something,
Instead, ask what you are,
Whether you respond, or not.

Live without a heart plan,
Carefully played out, in time.
Bring your love as compassion,
First inward, then running wildly.

In every corner of the world,
someone could use my hands, my life.
But in this corner,
life just flows.

Helpful action may arise,
or I may leave the needy alone.
Can you leave the world to itself,
and live in the circle of your own light?

If a couple lives a quiet life,
and dies right on time.
No one asks
"Why didn't they save the world?"

If I think one life changes the world,
while the rest slip by unnoticed,
having done too little,
I am made wrong.

More than one sage points back,
in an unsatisfying way,
holding both the doer of brave deeds,
and the doer of daily chores, lightly.

How do we turn our light around
and discover whose world,
and whose deeds
are unfolding here?

To start, ask who lives here and
what knows the living?
Without claims, action unfolds
and the doer is freed at heart.

If that is home, and
it is not fully known.
Be merciless in your asking.
Return ceaselessly to the asker.

The answer for now, is to
do what we can, what we will, for each other.
How can our guilt or fear
help even one?

If you are standing next to a burning house,
and have only a cup of water,
throw it on!
Don't wait to make a bigger statement.