If you have never known the world, how can you judge it?
Open the door to your home, step out, go out, trudge it.
March through mud and briers, scale cliffs,
stand at the tops of as many buildings and cliffs
as you can find. Find the frontier’s edge and budge it.
If you find yourself bogged in the sludge, it
is only so you can pull yourself out. Trudge it.
How will you find the grass beyond your What Ifs,
if you have never known the world?
If you have never known the world, how can you judge it?
There is wonder beyond the stutter and drudge; it
only requires that you seek it, that you sniff
it out from its burrows among the heather and thrifts.
How can you embrace life’s trial and not begrudge it
if you have never known the world?
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
