Unreasonable Men

we were asked to write poetry for the volunteer firefighters of our city, in recognition of their search and rescue efforts after the volcanic eruption

The moment comes when

a reasonable man will say,

this is not in the description

of what I get paid to do.

He will say, I will just walk

away; someone else can do

this thing. It has always been

so easy, for us to all say,

someone really should step

up and do something.” Our

most unreasonable men

do not stop and calculate

what they get in return.

They say, if someone should

do it, I guess that I

am someone.

 

And then they just go

and do the damned thing

that needs to be done,

when and how it needs

to be done. We call

reasonable men, “Realists,”

and inhabit their world

through coercion, seasoned

with high doses

of common sense. We

remove ourselves from

everything that looks

like it might be dangerous.

 

Unreasonable men

run towards the things

that scare the rest of us;

the things we run away from.

We call these men, the

“Rescuers.” What they

excavate from the depths

of hell is nothing less

than our renewed faith

in each other.

Reviews

[charlie]

Responsible means being able to respond, and there are those who are more 'honest' about that than others.