! ! Birthright, Giftright Poem by Michael Shepherd

Look at it this way for a moment,
if it please you:

those horoscopes (Dad
called them ‘horror-scopes’)
which we may read with mingled
emotions, hopes, resentments;

seeing fatalism imposed on us,
rather than a challenge –
suppose them, not as limitations
laid on this unwilling innocent…

but rather, that at very moment
inside, outside, passing time,
and in that very place,
the balance of the cosmos – that, so exquisite,
that we may never know the microscopic detail
of its – Love’s – magnitude;

that balance needed such as, exactly,
and uniquely, you – yes, you -
you, beyond any self-imposed
limits such as guilt, regret,
duties assumed, reproach or failure,
roles adopted, status sought; or those
demands of others to which to comply –

to play that role the cosmos needs of you –
and as the ancients say, not Fate but glorious Necessity..
to dance, to sing, to glide, to sail, to fly
through life; life asking nothing more of you –
oh bliss beyond belief –
than that you let your light
so shine before all men…and… just be…
just be, and gloriously, yourself..