For Bernard

It seems difficult to simply be
And live life like the animal lives
In its difficult simplicity

Existence takes as much as it gives
Does the living animal enjoy
Its life? Does my awareness destroy
My life's quantity through quality
Almost as though quality control
Were the function of my human soul?

As though the moment of perfection
That hole-in-one singularity
Must cost a lifetime of reflection
And come then at the end of it all
As valediction actually
Like a perfect maple leaf in fall

Existence gives as much as it takes
Making the sense the sense of it makes
Like a blessing and a curse combined

As we who share the benefits of
Existence before and then behind
If we are lucky and in the now
Discover our meaning is to love
And if time and circumstance allow
Learn the hard way but know what to do

To know what to do might seem less than
To simply be the animal man
But to know then do is to love too
As long as knowing then I do it
As short as I have at and to it
To simply be and love all I can

+Steven Curtis Lance



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