Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny human giant
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
■
Hello Friends,
Today's advice poem comes from Alice Walker's 1973 collection Revolutionary Petunias: And Other Poems.
One small textual note: When this poem was originally printed in 1973, the second line of the third stanza read "So tiny human midget," but Walker revised "midget" to "giant" in later editions of her collected poems. This revision suggests to me that she never intended "midget" as a slur; I think she meant to be referring to our smallness in the sense that we are "tiny humans" on one little planet circling one tiny star in a vast universe for a blip in all of infinite time.
Enjoy.
Ellen