A Life Not Quite Complete Poem by DONALD SCHUSTER

Luxury is knowing our end is shorter than our beginning, we can see things from the mountain top not the valley.
So much knowledge has washed beneath us we did not slow long enough to listen.
We were told to reach for the stars. Gravity is but a road bump along the journey to riches and reward, conflict is but a test one we need to make us stronger to ward off life's woes, it was said to build a shell so hard it will defend against the strongest winds. Were these lessons bad? No, but incomplete.
Our lives were not storybook tales, or the offspring of playwrights or movie makers. We were not exceptional heroes. But simply the masters of everyday stagehands.
We succeeded, we failed, we lived somewhere in the middle. Was this enough to make genius complete?
We mastered learning but fell short when we listened to bigness not measured by the
immensity of our smallness. We were too busy finding the large life to fully live within the lane of our own worth.
Our grand plans, should we have had any, proved to be only illusions chasing all kinds of shiny objects proving to ourselves that we too can be taken in by narrow daydreams. For some the shiny objects of dreams came wrapped in tiny foil packets or bottles fermented with make-believe, leaving only the scourge of a strong want that never fully goes away.
It was said that our brains have become full, leaving no other room for knowledge or
honesty of self.
Now that we can see the sunset, we've come full circle finding that poets are just as crucial as engineers, that songs are more than fillers of silence, and thinkers the true rulers of our fate.
Can we turn life's mirror outward away from vanity's fate so we can listen to the songs God has given us? Let us hope we can.

ES Donald/Donald Schuster