I thought I was supposed to

do something big,

but it kept never happening

and I felt really small.

My heart became a sad, little

shrinking thing, and if you took me

whole and entire, I’d have fit through

the hole of a salt shaker.

The crystals were like boulders to me.

The worst of it was

I knew it was good to be little

and so I felt I

had no right to be sad.

I was selling the message of

poor in the Spirit, and believed it too,

so why was I sad? I knew big

would do nothing for me.

Thank God I wasn’t always sad.

Joy stole up like a teasing child.

Play a game. Look at my kaleidoscope.

I didn’t have the heart to shoo her away.

All she had to do was move a single cloud

and the whole world looked different.

When she left, though, to play with her ocean,

I’d put all the clouds back in place.

And it stayed that way, my face

fixed in a wrinkle, and it

stayed that way

until one day I saw

what the problem was.

I was trying to be big by being

a prophet of the little,

but forgot to be, really be, little,

a man at home in his own wooly heart,

working in sleet and sun and stain,

ready to live life alive again.

A man in a hat. A man with a rake.

A man whom happiness would not forsake

at the drop of a hat.

So now I’m off to do that job –

to work for free in God’s own yard.

God will rain and God will blow,

and I’ll rake His leaves and shovel His snow.

And smile as I do, for the little I know.