Anything

A prose poem

You can say the humanities are not essential. That is your choice. After all, zeroes and ones control the maps and steps and beats of today. You must learn the tricks of tech that tomorrow will change. You should spend time running to keep pace up this tower we’ve made.

Because portraits take too much time. 
And Lord knows they won't go for a dime. 
The children must eat so fathers will mine. 
So, darlin, we just can’t waste time. 
We’ll choke it with work and talk small about its climb. 
Why waste a long day’s night for a portrait’s time?

But there will be a day when your wife stands before you in a long, pearl dress and you will want to dance. There will be a moment when your father sits front row in black, and you’ll hold a paper, harboring sentences and memories you’ll try to pack. There will be a second when you will recall the song your mother used to pick on that old blue guitar. There will be a boy who within you finds a new watchfulness you’ll want to understand and a girl who laughs like something you’ll want to describe. There will be a song you’ll want to sing on the front porch of an old grandma’s home, decorated with Christmas things.

And, I think, there will be a day, you will stand by heaven’s gates, and He will ask, “What did you think? What did you paint?

“Did you dance? Did you sing? Did you learn to say something?

“Did you enjoy the days and moments and seconds and the woman and the babes and all the wild things?

“I want to see what you made. I want to hear what you think.”

And on that day, my friend, what will you say? Anything?