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When I First Arrived
When I first arrived in Denver,
I was full of visions about the future.
In my mind's eye, I created the perfect ten months.
I watched myself become a master carpenter,
a computer expert, while daydreaming in the
airport.
I watched as I pulled infants
out of the path of storm-blasted buildings,
performed CPR on beautiful women,
and saved entire towns from destruction
with my sand bag walls.
I saw myself as some kind of sun-bronzed
saint, and filled the next ten months with virtue
and miracles.
The visions embarrassed me.
Still I gulped them down,
pausing only to savor my genius
and dedication.
I never imagined the tedium
that service can entail.
It's the simple acts
that no one ever talks about.
Mundane as filling out tax forms
for the elderly,
grueling as sanding thousands
of foot-long boards
to make children's beds safer.
It's a little known fact that most heroes
die of boredom.
Never in those visions
did I stop to really look around
at the faces of the men and women
working beside me.
My hands have mastered the secret language
of chain saws and power sanders.
I have taught beautiful,
forgotten children how to read.
I have loved those who weren't cared for,
and watched people who were considered broken
perform miracles.
It has been the hardest work of my life.
And how to explain the meat of it to someone,
but to say:
I touched this world,
and it kissed me back.
I bled for the mountains,
and they revealed to me their secrets.
I swam in freezing waters
and found my own endurance.
I carried those who could not walk,
and they taught me how to stand.
But I am not a hero. I know that now,
because I walked beside them. Men and women
whose hearts pump fire, to whom adventure
is everyday, and courage
a common thing.
They are my friends, my brothers
and sisters,
my teammates.
I love these people
for teaching me how to serve
and for giving me a gift
that I can never repay:
humility. |
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