24/52: for Barbara

I feel like a song
would be appropriate -
it's what the Greeks or Asyrians would do.

Don't each of our lives deserve a song?

It's something we've forgotten,
embarassed by having overcome
what portions of life did not kill us.

I don't mean a sappy doo-wop,
or a whiney country twang,
or the empty angst of rock,

but maybe something chanted to a drum -
to capture the fact that each of us
wakes up each day
intending to do the best she can do;
to be the best she can.
Until she cannot,

and the drum would go silent
and the words would trail off