All We Can Do
       

All we can do on this earth is step into the future
with a sense of the many people behind us,
the living and the dead, as if we carried our bodies
like amphorae filled with sunbeams into each new day,
continually reaching inside ourselves
to scatter golden butterflies over the land before us,
or to fling them against the night, not like tears, but like stars
that will guide those who follow across the darkness.

Copyright © 2010 Morton Marcus All rights reserved
from The Dark Figure in the Doorway
White Pine Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission