Legacy

To consider leaving legacies is a pass-time for the very old,

adding or subtracting value on past times, past deeds,

checking back to see what’s missing, yet to do.

My life and I are legacy from long-gone generations.

As my parents’ dream of schooling lives on in me,

I would bequeath delight in education, travel, art.

Some parents yearn for title, wealth, or fame.

Not mine! Those never crossed our minds!

“Be neither a tall poppy nor a cringing mouse.”

I speculate that my mine-alone imagination

is, in fact, an eon’s culmination of human dreams,

fantasies and hopes whittled down by culture’s blade.

The line of legacy is badly jarred by famines, wars.

Plagues reset the gyroscope.

Civilization lurches, bleeds, regresses, back to caves and swords.

The legacies we wish to leave are here, here in this written search.

done in clans, in circles, or alone in pregnant silence: sort!

Dream of universal Light, heart-lifting mutuality, and love.

Don’t forget to reconsider.

You might have got it wrong! Now at the end,

it might not be too late to change your mind, do more

or reinterpret from new angles only now absorbed

by living long, by sitting stiller than you’ve ever sat before,

by giving in to wildness, humor, and new love.

– Marybeth Webster, South Mountain Friends Meeting (NPYM)