The Quiet Life

On refusing the chase

I do not crave the monuments of stone,
nor chase the fleeting thunder of applause.
Let others gild their names in fame’s bright bronze.
I’ll walk the woods, unmarked, without a cause.

What use is it, this hunger to be known,
when knowing fades like footprints in the snow?
The loudest names grow quiet, overgrown.
The stars don’t care what empires rise below.

I’d rather be the breeze that stirs the wheat,
the unnamed hand that steadies someone’s fall,
the silence after music, strange and sweet,
a life that answers to no public call.

Let history forget I passed this way.
I lived. I loved. That’s all I meant to say.

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