What Goes Around

What Goes Around

I’m frequently reminded how fragile life can be,
It changes so fast, we often fail to see.
That everyone’s important, in their special way,
We fail to see the good around us every single day.

Many pray for peace, yet we do our best to war,
We rail against those different, even if next door.
We belittle the unusual ones, do not to see their worth,
After all, they aren’t like us, been this way since birth.

That was the case with Arthur, a man with vision blind,
He had no time for uncommon folk, just those of his kind.
Good looks blessed him, fortune everywhere he went,
He looked down on commoners, couldn’t stand their scent.

He’d stride past the disabled, whom he never saw,
Wouldn’t give them anything, not a bone on which to gnaw.
In his mind he was a legend, and lived the life of kings,
Never worried about the ‘morrow, or what that day may bring.

One day while out walking, he slipped on a banana peel,
Went tumbling down some stairs, head over heel.
When he finally came to rest, his looks were gone for good,
Missing teeth, nose aslant, his face like chopped wood.

Try as they might, the best surgeons could not repair,
In fact he looked even worse, his head devoid of hair.
His fingers were now gnarly, nails long and untrimmed,
He found himself in disbelief, for he was one of ‘them’!

His friends no longer talked to him, they walked right past,
It was a different world in which he had been cast.
No longer handsome, his fortune long since spent,
He would sit on a corner, begging for just one cent.

Amazing how what goes around, returns thrice fold,
You get what you reap, Arthur was left in the cold.
He’d been taught a lesson, a hard one to be learned,
That everyone’s important, no one should be spurned.

Jim Dorrell
1/7/14