It's Still Life

The Gift Economy

We are not measured by balance sheets,
a favour owed, a debt now cleared.
The soul keeps no such ledger.

We are measured by the cup of water
given to the rootless seed,
by the shelter built for a stranger’s storm,
by the word spoken into a silence
that might never answer back.

Love, like poetry, is a gift economy.
It trades in whispers, not in coin.
It invests in barren soil,
pays dividends in unexpected bloom,
and its only contract
is the silent, sacred keeping
of another heart’s unspoken weight.

This is the currency of the gentle.
The only wealth that ever lasts.

May your days be a blessing.

~ Marilyn

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Note: I wrote this after watching people in Bogotá ignoring and stepping over refugees from Venezuela living rough on the streets. I was scolded for wanting to give the mother of a toddler son money, so I bought them two pizzas, and told everyone to sod-off.

Poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2026.