After the Game Is Over
After the game is over, before the vitriol begins
and those who would have the world be a darker place
commandeer the conversation that we otherwise might have,
can we not sit awhile and gratefully take in
the beauty of this autumn afternoon?
After the marriage ends, as we go our separate ways,
each to make the most of life on terms each has the right to set,
can we not repurpose the energy long spent
on scoring points in all those games
which neither of us ever stood much chance to win?
Get Gary Simons’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After the job’s been lost through no fault of our own
and life seems bleak and empty and exceedingly unfair,
before we settle on precisely whom to blame
for all those complicated things which went so very wrong,
can we not look upon the landscape of a life
at all that’s left to do and experience and dare
and then forge of compassion and mutual concern
a shield against the ups and downs of life
which each of us in turn might gladly wear?
After the election has been lost or won
by honorable competitors who pledge and celebrate
that either thing may happen each time they take the field,
before the profiteers of doom exact their heavy price
or we fall again for promises of greatness undeserved,
can we not scrutinize the length of time
when men have walked on Earth
and realize that here and now are riches of a hundred sorts
that never were bequeathed before to any people anywhere
and opportunities unrivalled, if we could rise to them?
After the journey’s done, before we face the Ages,
as the Good Ship America drops anchor one last time
decayed and decommissioned in her prime,
can we not stop and ask ourselves what it all was for,
the anger, the injustice, the intoxication fueled by hate,
the accolades we heaped upon the tribunes of vast greed,
the willingness to trust the most self-interested of men,
when, unlike the hundred thousand generations to compare,
we had the gift, self-government, entrusted to our care?
After a life has ended, before the debts have all been paid,
as we mourn and search for meaning in the finite grant of time,
can we not find it in ourselves to emulate and honor
those who put more in than they took out,
the least among us called to greatness and to goodness
in the cause of the betterment of man?
