To Trade for Understanding

It's interesting,

that happiness and an exuberant feeling,

Must be traded away

For calm and cool-headedness

To understand books.

A Million Vistas

Today a friend came up to me

His problems he told; I’d heard them before

And on he went his tears were flowing

Yet stoppered was my heart

I said to him, ‘Why dost thou struggle,

and mention them again and again?’

He replied, ‘Can’t you see

This thing mattereth a lot to me?’

And broken I felt for I hadn’t seen,

I had looked from my vantage point, not his

Though it had mattered little to me

A gentle ear of mine, patient, meant the world to him

This is the truth, then, the fact of life

Every man, is given their experience

And the man who is wise,

Who has only one pair of eyes

Closes his vision,

To peek into others

And in so doing,

Gains a million vistas

And a million hearts, a million friends,

And a million experiences