God's Opinion Poll

Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning. The youth may have come from prison to the kingship, or he may have been born in poverty within his kingdom. I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed the youth, the kingʼs successor. There was no end to all the people who were before them. But those who came later were not pleased with the successor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. ~ Ecclesiastes 4:13-16 NIV

Whippersnapper. Upstart.
Charisma?
Foolish youth, tossing out the past.
Visionary,
lacking old expectations
so able to see?
Mystic or misanthrope?
Hard to tell.
At first.
Time tells.
Life tells.
Those who come later know
what earlier folk
learned the hard way.
Live by opinion polls,
die by opinion polls.

God, Socrates said:
“Be as you wish to seem.”
Help me to win your popularity poll,
not the media’s.

Barbara B. Rollins, A Time for Verse - Poetic Ponderings on Ecclesiastes (Kindle Locations 360-365).