This your gift

She said that each one in the world
has a special talent: what we’re better at,
than anybody else… so, it’s a glorious gift,
- a glorious duty - to know, acknowledge, this;

but what happens, so she said,
is that we know this, and deny it;
but then if pressed somehow, we make
a condition for ourself: ‘well, only if…’
and this – the devil in the detail – is a way
to lock our talent in; to keep the world without…

I said to her, an instance? and she said,
this man, he had a gift: to be always
in the rightest place, and at the rightest time;
but when this was revealed to him, he said,
OK but only if I can give up my job..
but it was his job, she said, enabled him
to manifest that talent…

you may not forget this poem;
this was a lady I shall not forget.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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