He wasn't Atlas

He wasn’t Atlas, and he didn’t

shrug. But the time had come,

he thought, to stop compensating,

compensating for decisions made

beyond his control, decisions

reflecting not malice or ill will

but ignorance, and fear, the two

things that stimulate most decisions

like this. So he sloughed off two

of the jobs he couldn’t do

any more, and the half of a job

that was almost beyond him,

and settled for a single job, one job,

one job that he was paid for, doing

it well and faithfully.

Western civilization didn’t collapse

and the world didn’t come to an end,

at least not at first.

Photograph by Alex Borland via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.