What is

What is life, my friend? 

What does it mean?

What does it give?

What does it take? 

Is it gift or treasure?

Is it responsibility or load?

Is it fate or destiny?

Is it for only for you or me?

How do we treasure it?

How can we protect it?

Where can it take us?

Why should we care? 

Is there a quote that explains?

Is there a phrase that comforts? 

What is life, my friend? 

What does it mean?

Reviews

[R J Askew]

Hmmm, I don't have an answer to any of those questions. I can't recall thinking to hard about them either. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I've never worried about them, which does make me wonder if I am actually alive! Maybe I'm scared of the questions, or lazy in the face of them, or in denial. i don't know. Could it be there are as many answers as there are people alive, that none of us ever know, so don't ask? I don't know. Maybe I'll wake up one day and realised I've completely missed the point of it all, life, or not. I think the questions make me defensive, maybe.

[emmajoygreen]

Each of us has a path to walk and perhaps a chosen destination. Freedom to be allows variations. To feel as you do is a given to a free man - or woman. All I can add is that we live in a world with others and to be as happy and content we should at least TRY to accept isolation as a judgement of self, set by self. Maybe think that seventy five percent of questions are friendly.. 'Doing unto others in our vast planet is a helping hand.. perhaps. Smile at your tomorrow, sir.

[Pete]

tough questions for sure. the answers probably change as we go along. different life events and feelings shaping our answers. things don't change, we do (hopefully for the better). probably best answered when we face our own mortality. all i know i that it is very precious and it's time short.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Life is something we experience and as poets write in reaction to where it takes us, how it hits us and we want to do with it.
I love a writing with so many questions. It forces the reader to become part of the process of the poem finding success.
And this one sure did with me.
j.

[emmajoygreen]

Good morning, sir Poet! Tis always grand to share another day with your wonderful words and friendship! Hello, never ever before shared 2nd July, 2025! I try to learn something new every day.. sometimes I do - or don't! Please feel free to share the whatever process that arrives to and from my lil mind, dear friend! :)

[Neha agrawal]

What a heartfelt and thoughtful piece — your poem echoes the timeless questions that live in all of us. It’s gentle yet profound, like a quiet conversation with existence itself.

[emmajoygreen]

Many thanks, my new and welcome friend. Sometimes, answers take time to clarify their meaning.. so, we wait and wait hopefully that what appears and whenever.. makes sense or maybe not immediately. One can only wait and see: is called time-wasting at the highest level! :)

[red93]

I really like this Emma, how you pose these rhetorical questions and then just leave them hanging in the air unanswered.

Hope you are managing to keep cool in sunny Dorset. It is absolutely baking here, just up the road in Bristol UK atm !

Exceptional ✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[emmajoygreen]

Is too hot for a blonde gardener whose brimmed hat gets in the way! As of tomorrow borrowing brother's cap and am out as soon as possible - five-ish with permission granted at three gardens, Elsewise evening even tho air will still be hot. Have tracked down battery run hand fans.. the guy at the till when was paying said he couldn't let me have a dozen.. but when I told him my work, he allowed me six. Now of course, I feel guilty. Many thank yous for your kind review. Take great care there, Bristolian (two Ls?)

[emmajoygreen]

Now of course, I have to think and think where. But, shhhh, need think.. if can!

[red93]

Great News about the Fans Em 😁

I am only an honorary Bristolian (1 L). I am originally from somewhere rather further West than Bristol 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[red93]

Welsh Wales Em - although I have been in the Bristol area since 1970 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[emmajoygreen]

Way back I lived in Pontardulais (sp) for six months and bought f*****s from the bakery! Never had a a one since to better them! Ladies would take empty jugs with them to buy the gravy-liquor! You have all sorts of history running through your veins! .

[red93]

Fabulous Em. But I am a Bristol boy now and I call it home - been here for 55 years, and for all Bristol's problems, it is a great City.

[emmajoygreen]

I know it well, have friends who live there too: in fact they were up here last weekend with others in my garden!

[red93]

✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[LisaCarol]

The timing of this writing is very surreal for me. I just received news this morning of a former coworker’s passing. He had cancer and was only 58. The news and this poem both remind me I am responsible for living my best life. Thank you for sharing your writing my friend.

[emmajoygreen]

How very sad, so sorry.. Could say more about what he was going through but your sadness would still be there in your gentle and generous heart, dear friend. Every day is precious, every second even more so. Hug.

[Weeping willow]

I use to love waking up in the afternoon and still hear the birds singing in our trees. Even inside the darkest tunnels of depression light comes to show life is sacred in all things. Life is just life to be lived as best you can. ;-] Loved your words

[emmajoygreen]

Many thank yous, Weeping willow (my favourite tree!), especially because we think and believe the same. The sound of birds singing in such majestic surroundings are Nature's gift, the Lord's
gift, how honoured we are. Yes?!

[Lorry]

All of the above would be my best guess. It can be all of those things at some point or other, depending on everyone's circumstances, but one answer keeps flashing in my eyes a neon signal of how we treasure and protect it is to live it, to experience its all'ness, good and bad.
We can all be keyboard philosophers when we're sitting in a nice and comfy padded chair, but until those two cheeks leave their comfort zone and go and live life to the fullest, with the possible exception of a few things like taking a hot air balloon ride over an active volcano or swimming in the sea where everything that lives there wants to kill you, or going on holiday in Scotland without a waterproof romper suit!
I'm sure I've missed a few off the list, but I reckon it covers most of it and you could always add "if you can't be good, be lucky" to cover the rest!
😃

[emmajoygreen]

'live life to the fullest, with the possible exception of a few things like taking a hot air balloon ride over an active volcano or swimming in the sea where everything that lives there wants to kill you, or holidaying in Scotland without a waterproof romper suit!' Making the reader smile and laugh at the same time as reminding her or a very important lesson is a gift spreading through this never-before-month and onwards ad infinitum! Many thanks, dear sir. :)

[Vol]

EmmaJoy,
In downtown Pensacola, 1968, we discovered an alley to the midnight interior of a city block. We exchanged glances and drove in to see what was there. On the wall to the left was a splotch of rough graffiti, a four inch brush of white paint scrawled WHY? in two foot letters.
Inside the four story cavern were dumpsters, broken furniture, other office detritus and a long metal stairs to a third floor door. I climbed the stairs past two floors to a small landing and looked through the small, eye-level window set in the door. Inside looked like a storage for all kinds of desks and lamps and stuff… as my gaze lifted, I was suddenly confronted with a pair of EYES STARING BACK AT ME!!! Some adrenaline machine gun went off and I was blown to pieces, had a heart attack, and almost fell down the stairs, when I realized that there, about eight foot in, was a tall MIRROR!
It was an existential adventure for sure, and I’ve spent the intervening fifty-odd years in in search of the answer. Even back then I realized the importance it would have in m life and needed to share the insight. I don’t remember how many times I invited friends to smoke some weed, ask them “WHY?” and took them to climb the stairs on dark nights to find out for themselves.
Why, indeed?
Vol
P. S. EmmaJoy, did you ever read V. S. Naipaul’s short story “B. Wordsworth?”

[emmajoygreen]

YESSS!!!! That goes back a while, and, is waiting and waving at me to read again... I will when the tennis is over! Take care, dear sir.. but before you try to sleep, turn all mirrors to the wall.. and then stare at the strange thingies there in their stead!

[Vol]

EmmaJoy,
"Strange thingies," especially when recommended by a beautiful friend, ae a passion of mine...
Vol

[emmajoygreen]

laughing, need rush off but will message here later.. take care, sir. extra hug for the good lady!

[Salvatore]

Such a big question! I could answer that life is an opportunity, a chanche to take your slice of world, to do your best to be remembered.
The questions you wrote are far beyond the most common and banal that are always asked, and more deeper.
Nice poem, short and intense.

[emmajoygreen]

Many thanks for looking in, Salvatore, your words are more than simpatico!

[Michael Sun Bear]

Wow! A very thoughtful examination of the mystery of existence and what it means. I guess it’s up to each of us individually to examine our inner selves and find the answers to the questions you raise. Myself I am very spiritual but I don’t turn to church for those answers. Some of my poetry is spiritual in nature and I have written of some of the answers as I have found them. Anyway, I just woke up, I can hear birds singing as the sun is rising here in Seattle, that is an answer for the moment. Good morning to you!

[emmajoygreen]

There is no better good morning than waking to bird song and - knowing another day is waiting for you! I call our local world 'the all about' - has a sort of spiritual touch but... Here is 13.05 and about to go into the garden with a sandwich and dish of fruit and - listen to bird song with a UK accent! Take care of yourself, sir Sun Bear!