Michael Shepherd - ! The Simple Person

and when you’re a child, you learn so much
of ‘grown-up’ life, of ‘grown-up’ values –

by the tone of voice
in which they say things

my mother, saying of a particular person
whom I’d never met – or if I had,
would not have known what to make of them –

‘She’s a simple person’

and the tone of voice with which she said this
was full of compassion, without a touch of criticism:

it meant, she has no mind with which to make complexity.
Not a hint there of some label like mentally challenged,
or mentally under-privileged;

rather, the purity of a soul untrammelled;
indeed, a state of grace

for in her day, the honourable poor
looked after, were at one with their simpler kin;
while free to honour the skilled and fortunate

and I listening, wondered if I could rise to life’s challenges
as a simple person.

Michael Shepherd

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-simple-person/