There’s no report card at the end of life
no performance review with the boss
no panel to judge, no teacher to grade
your body of work as a win or a loss
—
Answer to yourself, if you must give answers
though why pile on all that extra pain?
Who said you must use a deathbed for reckoning
and couldn’t just die in it, simple and plain?
—
Spreading around your kindness and joy
in present-time living becomes its own benefit
Can you reap it now, without a report card
or hoping for death to validate everything?