How Do You Measure...?

Lessons Learned

Immeasurable

How do you measure the light in an eye

When a meaning’s discerned or a point becomes clear?

How do you measure the rush of a “yes”

When affirmation catapults you past your fear?

How do you measure the encouraging effect

Of a smile or a hug that says, “yes, I believe?”

How do you measure the thrill of the warmth

When a new hopeful chance is the gift you receive?

How do you measure acceptance’s joy

When a bridge is constructed to link heart to heart?

How do you measure connections great strength

When a hand has reached out to you right from the start?

We measure the numbers. We plot on a grid.

We calculate, calibrate, glad that we did,

Because when we can metricize, measure, compare,

And reduce growth to numbers, there’s no humanness there.

So it’s easy to cut, reduce or down-size,

As we look on the numbers, not into their eyes.

Sometimes the value, the victory, the gain,

Is intangible, immeasurable, yet so very plain.

For how do you measure the change in a life

That relationally occurs when the meaning is deep?

Like the growth of a seed buried deep in the earth

Which erupts in a bloom from its soil covered sleep.

darcy hill