Merit Needs a Publicist (Very Short Essays 01)

Merit Needs a Publicist

Merit needs a publicist.
It needs to be recognized
By the recognized.

You can heave off your bushel,
paint arrows on the sidewalk,
offer prizes, hand out samples,
but unless you get the attention
of those who command attention,
the bushel boomerangs,
obscuring your light
to extinction.

(It's the same - the opposite -
with evil, greed, cruelty.
Until someone of stature
points a finger and says
"For shame,"
people -
because people are sheep -
will ignore,
or worse, praise,
or worst, follow,
the perpetrators of hate.)

Merit needs a publicist:
Someone to say
"Well done"
in a voice people believe.
Merit won't out,
without it.

(I wrote the first version of this in March 2006. I'd thought it, the title, anyway, for a long time before that.)

RJM 9/26/2009

Series title added - 7/20/2013