Make A Difference

Looking out at this enormous world so vast

Seven point two billion bodies and rising by the hour

Problems facing every nation and each single soul

Economic challenge, climate change and poverty unbound

Pollution, epidemics, religious wars and internecine strife

Discrimination, corruption, flood, famine and disease

Is there no end to this long litany of woes?

And much of this distress caused by our own ungracious hearts

Our selfishness and greed shouts down all pleadings

Of those who find themselves on the wrong side

Of the health and prosperity divide that cleaves our world

The rich nations determined to secure their gain

Turn an eye that’s blind an ear that’s deaf

To that which they refuse to recognize

So what’s the point, can one benighted soul

Make any difference in the face of such distress?

Better simply to bury one’s head and conclude that

Amidst such overwhelming angst

The safer course, all simply to ignore

Maintain one’s own composure

and let the rest go hang!

But some inner voice, perhaps an echo of the past

Cannot let us rest content without response

Surely one tiny candle can help dispel the dark

If we cannot cure the world’s great ills

Perhaps a loving act, a kindly word

Might bring relief to those around

A blessing to our kin and to our neighbour

And just as the mustard seed can burgeon

If cultivated and garnered by creative hands

So too might each of us become the catalyst

In the alchemy of re-creation

Which in due time might yield regeneration

Beyond all our modest yearnings and our hopes

So what is needed is simply the determination

To take that first step along the road of hope

And by our own unswerving resolution

To become the force that initiates new life

And as we fix our eyes on the horizon

Our puny efforts might yet gain momentum

That difference surely in due time thus manifest

Ken Fisher