This place is a catalog of failures,
and my heart is not a philanthropist.
Put away your excuses, however dear they are to you,
and show me your most vital dreams, the ones
that make you smile at yourself, at the world,
but which you won't relinquish, not even for me,
because to deny them would be to betray yourself.
Tell me what you've learned, not what you've earned.
Be mind-sharp, body-fit, and heart-kind, because
the world is a challenge that you must always
be ready for. And so am I.

Even within the marketplace
stay outside of the marketplace,
for those who sell and those who buy
can never sit together easily.
If you are cynical or jaded—
well, why wouldn't you be!
But be fresh. Be honest.
Be daring. Be different.
Even if what differentiates you
is an unusually-normal guise.
If you have already lived your life
and want now only to rest and wait,
then warm yourself on memories
and be content to never know me.
It's okay.

But if you refused to be hurried,
if you rejected a scripted life,
if you've been distracted for a while
by interesting discoveries and have just looked up,
startled by the clock and the surprising movement
of intimates away from you, take a moment to establish
your new parameters, gauge your hunger for opportunity,
and then open again, renewed, like a wildflower in spring,
mad for growth and ready for communion with another new
old thing that has struggled through winter and woken
from pleasant dreams, a little groggy, to find the snow melting
and the sun still bright and beckoning.