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?