Responsibility

Wouldn’t there be a pervasive tranquility

If more people showed some responsibility?

 

Why, for example, can people sue

A restaurant--let’s say a certain drive-through--

After spilling in their lap the coffee they’d bought,

And claim that their coffee had been too hot?

Since coffee can be hot, why haven’t they learned

That if you aren’t careful, you can get burned?

This makes me wonder about the futility

Of expecting societal responsibility.

 

Consider the people about whom you’ve heard mention

Who amble along without paying attention

With their eyes and thoughts on their cellular phone,

Fall into a fountain, and then afterwards moan

And gripe about how it was stupid because

The fountain should not have been where it was!

This, too, suggests the likely futility

That some will ever show responsibility.

 

There are also those people in parking lots

Who leave shopping carts by their parking spots--

Instead of finding the appropriate places--

And then speed away as if off to the races

While the carts roll through the lot and mar

The paint job on somebody else’s car.

Again I wonder: is it a futility

To expect to see personal responsibility?

 

And another thing...ugh...I have a fit

When I’m out for a walk and I step in dog s--t!

All right, maybe it’s true I’m not hep,

And I know I have to watch where I step,

But tell me, is it laziness or what

That some people can’t clean up after their mutt?

Does it also to you seem a futility

To expect in others some responsibility?

 

I could give you another example

For believe you me, I have ample.

But let me step down from my soap box. Okay?

And do forgive me if I’ve been risqué.

You’re certainly not in the line of fire,

For I’m sure I am preaching to the choir.

My point today--well, that’s easy to see--

Is about responsibility.

(6-14-14)