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All You Can Do

Jacquelyn Shah

    I believe in benevolent dictatorship
    provided I am the dictator––Richard Branson
    All nothing’s only our hugest home––e. e. cummings
    KCCO

This is what you can do, the only thing
old you should do––sleep at night.
Lay head on pillow, close eyes, stretch
into nighttime’s contours to wait
for peerless oblivion. Think of nothing.

Do this each morning that you wake:
dote on little birds with beaks that poke
into the feeder––sparrows and finches, content
with mere seed; praise rays of sun
warming the entire yard, your little yard
full of rose and iris and bottlebrush,
one with no man or instrument of power, force, fury.
Be appreciative of every little thing,
largely ignoring mega-stuff
you’re powerless to alter.

Have a cup of tea,
or not.
Remain enchained to no custom;
stay loose, freewheeling,
treating trepidation like a foreign affair,
an alien fiend that has no entrance
to your minuscule domain.
Worry’s only too willing to trample
someone else’s mindyard
when you have claimed tranquility,
the ideal state. Prior to calamity
you should calmly wait
as you anticipate more awful change––
yours and the world’s.

Furnish your All Nothing with nothing
but easy chairs whose arms can cushion yours.
Relax, until it comes, that ineluctable demise.

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