worth it?

the benefit-cost analysis

what is there new to say?
when I take time from the doing
to thinking about the doing,
part of me is like an old Rolladex
which I spin and there I find list after list
on which I update what to do, what to write,
and then if I’ve written of it,
I need to figure if there are still subsets, tangents,
different takes on the same original
worth the venture of focus and words,

I hope that, with the breaths I’m still allowed,
that I can, in any way,
pay back any of the cost
my life debits from the whole,
that’s part of why I write,
that whole with which life must negotiate,
the world that is before us, is here now,
and will be just fine when we no longer
subtract our individuality from the possibilities
inherent in the moment,

how can we tell who should use
what is only possibility and then it is spent?

how easy, and maybe how right,
it is to judge a choice, a reality worthless than the other,
for when we spend resources, possibilities, every moment
we judge one to be worth more than the other,
every child, everyone of us, every choice is a bet with the future
that the benefit is worth the cost.

by Henry Walker
November 14, ‘09