We were the ones who would remake the earth,
Whose dreams spread wide as any morning sky —
Each decade stripped another hope of worth,
And still we did not learn to say goodbye.
The novel unbegun, the cause unmade,
The love that asked too much, the road not crossed —
Not slain by fate, but gently, softly frayed,
Until we woke and counted what we’d lost.
Yet here is Dorothea’s quiet art:
To find, within the compass of one day,
The letter written with a generous heart,
The small, ungathered life given away.
No marble tomb, no monument, no name —
The good we do in secret is our fame.
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." – Annie Dillard