“Enough” – a poem by Steve McAllister
we don’t really need to serve our traditions of debt
that tell us that life must be tough
at any time we can say there will be no more
we can embrace the idea of enough
we don’t need to serve the economy of more
we don’t need to continually enable greed
we can take a step back and take a deep breath
and reconsider what we really need
but, some may say, what about all my rights
to have all that I can purchase
you’re certainly free to hoard up all you want
even if it does submerge us
because we all must be beholden
to all the free market offers
and we can only track and feel in control
when we’re exchanging dollars
and certainly times have proven
how much gets done when we let money flow
but before we consume every morsel of life
let’s reconsider where we want to grow
because our piles of garbage are growing fast
and they’re filled with things that we have mined
people ’round the world dig through that trash
just hoping that they’ll find
a treasure we discarded
because we didn’t know its value
but if we grew our sense of awareness
there’s so much more we could do
if we grew our responsibility
to the planet we inhabit
we wouldn’t act so flippantly
we wouldn’t have to panic
if we could grow our love for nature
and remember we’re part of it
and realize how much it would behoove us
if we could learn to love it
half as much as we pretend to love ourselves
as we try to fill the holes in our hearts
with commodities and consumables
don’t you think it’s time we start
to honor our mother more than we have
and thank her for how she provides
she gave us this little window of paradise
which is the only reason we’re alive
the debt we owe her is more than the debt we’ve incurred
in our voracious race for more stuff
the best way we can repay her
just to learn how to say “enough”
