This poem that I wrote reflects on how our lives are not for ourselves.  It is written in the form of a terza rima, where each stanza has three lines each and there is an interlocking rhyming pattern of a-b-a/ b-c-b/ c-d-c, etc.  Enjoy!  Nahum.

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We Living Die

We live to die and die to live

To sacrifice ourselves each day;

We die to self to better give.

*

To spawn new tree the acorn lays

In buried soil to spread its roots;

From there an oak shall make its way.

*

Cut down from branch is ripened fruit;

Their deaths sustain what starves on earth

And bears the seed for orchard shoots.

*

New babes are brought through painful birth

And hardship motivates the weak

To push them onto lives of worth

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And find the words they ache to speak.

The carcass of a shark or whale

On sandy floors both dark and deep

*

Are eaten ‘neath the ships that sail.

We eat what farmers packed and grew

That once had leaves and heads and tails.

*

We learn the things that others knew,

Those men who breathed in ages past;

The things we know are nothing new.

*

It’s so for us as those who passed:

We work our hands ‘till worn and spent

No matter what our race or class.

*

Five days a week we earn our rent,

Providing clothes and food to feed

On bended knees and backs that bent.

*

We’re here to meet what others need,

Our comfort not to find in rest

But live as sacrifice that bleeds.

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Then others pass what we invest

Once we have given all our best.

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© All rights reserved.  Nahum H. Sennitt 2024.