I’ve given enough to this life

with its contests and challenges.

In these almost sixty years

I’ve given it all for humanity’s sake.

Now I want to give to myself.

Giving to myself all that life took from me.

First, I give myself peace –

the peace I never knew living in the midst of

other people’s wars.

Second, I give myself solitude –

free from the grasping and clawing grip

of other people’s need.

Third, I give myself ease –

Victorian parlor woman ease

where life never asks more of me

than to read and write and dream.

Fourth, I give myself love –

the kind of love that says,

“To simply be is enough.”

copyright Lauri Ann Lumby