517 and 518

The seven-score and seventy sixth brick

was not the last brick to be mortar-set,

but was before, by many more score, picked

mundanely, long before the last was met.

But I have picked it out upon the wall,

and we are friends (at least if he agrees).

And though he sits too tall for one so small

as I to reach, I wave from nearby trees.

For he is best of all these bricks, I say—

I chose him for his skill and quality.

What brick has a more polished resumé

than one I chose by chance—quite randomly?

Choice makes no friendship that can’t be sustained

as well as chance, if both can be unfeigned.

~~~

Reach out for fruits, content to not have some.

Their tastes could add, though are not requisite.

Reach not because you need some benefit,

for reaching will be all you will become.

And there will be nowhere left you can run—

but reaching everything until you quit,

forever wanting all and none of it,

and fade in misery before you’ve won.

But if you reach, reach with that kind of hope

that hopes not as a need, but novelly.

That wants not as if grasping at a rope,

but wants, happy to stay if the need be.

Let not your life take that need-reaching trope—

love now, and reach only contentedly.