I've got a little list
of things I want to change.
It started out
just about me.

But I decided
not to be so limited,
so I added more.
Things about you,
things about him,
things about her.
Things about them,
and about the world.
Because why should I stop,
when there's more to add?

It was no longer a little list,
and it grew as I added.
The problems here,
the troubles there.
Bigger and bigger,
my list became.

It was just a little list,
now it was a book.
It seemed that everything
had something
that I wanted to change.
How can I get all this done?
I looked, and got sad,
that things were all this bad.

Then I got an idea.
I can't do them all,
especially not at once.
If I tried, I wouldn't
get anything done.
So I trimmed,
and I shrunk,
that huge list of mine.
I reduced it, to things
I can change,
I can affect,
I can influence.
Then I trimmed it some more,
to the ones
I considered
the most important.

I didn't forget all the rest,
no, I still care.
But to try and do too much,
leads to doing too little.

I've got a little list
of things that I can change.
And I'm changing them.

(bad) Nodeshell poetry, by The Nodeshell Rescue Team.