Fear and Courage

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. 
There can be no courage unless you're scared."         
--Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Strength is a matter of the amount of weight you can lift.
You are very strong if you can lift a very heavy weight.
Courage, as you pass your life through the cosmic drift,
Is needed to carry a very heavy fate.
Just as strength is measured by a material burden's mass and density,
So--as time makes a year of a moment, and a moment of a year--
As the pains and terrors of time increase in intensity,
And the bittersweet dream of life threatens to disappear--
Courage is measured by the beating heart that still carries on,
A heart that will keep carrying its heavy fate, till the last heart-beat is gone.
A heart that will love life, even if it seems in vain;
A heart that will want more life, even if it must be lived in pain;
A heart that yearns to live forever, but will settle for the now-time that it has here.
Courage is measured by how heavy the life-burdens are that the heart is willing to bear;
And by how much life is still loved, while death is coming with more pain to strip life void and bare:
By the weight of the fate the heart is determined to endure; and by how great the weight of its fear.

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--Written by Michael LP
aka MLP, aka Mr. Poet, aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC
(I'm just me)
Copyright © 2009 by M.L.P.   All rights reserved.