Measuring Up

Measuring Up

- By Ruth Calder Murphy -

Don’t measure me with scales and tapes.

I’m not a prize pumpkin that should be reckoned so.

Don’t measure me by height or weight,

discard or accept me, judge me or pity me,

love me or despise me

based on the bodily size of me...

I’d ask you to measure the pleasure my words bring,

or the perspective of my paintings

or the depth of my thought…

but I ought not, for in the dark of night,

when words flee and sight’s irrelevant

and my brain is incapable of anything more than staying afloat

- of staying alive

(And I’m not talking of physical night,

that falls softly and at dawn, slips away,

but the darkness that thunders ‘round my soul,

in plain sight of day...)

What then?

Will I be found wanting when all sense and sanity

have gone away?

Put them away,

your plumb lines and your calipers,

your guages and thermometers,

scales and tintometers…

Close your eyes, if you must

- what they see is only dust,

though stardust, true, and beautiful…

Now, in the silence and the dark,

feel the beating of your heart

and Spirit, running through.

These things alone are true and they should be

the only measurement of you, or me.

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