There's no report card at the end of life

A little poem for when I need to snap out of workaholic impulses

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?