The Shortest Story

There was a man named Harry Chapin who was a beautiful story teller, the best to some. He wrote many stories and songs. He died several years ago at far too young an age. He was an amazing man who did so much for people and was a huge advocate for the cause of world hunger. This is a song he wrote called The Shortest Story



I am born today

The sun burns a promise in my eye

Momma strikes me

And I draw a breath and cry

Above me a cloud softly

Tumbles through the sky

I am glad...to be alive



It is my seventh day

I taste the hunger and I cry

My brother and sister

Cling to momma's side

She squeezes her breast

But it has nothing to provide

Someone weepsI fall asleep



It is twenty days today

Momma does not hold me anymore

I open my mouth

But I am too weak to cry

Above me a bird

Slowly crawls across the sky

Why is there nothing

Now to do but die



Even just writing this out makes me cry. It is so unbelievably unfair to me that someone who did so much for the world was taken so early. He could have done so much more good and helped so many people if he was given the years to do so. What is written on his gravestone sums it up perfectly:



Oh if a man tried

To take his time on Earth

And prove before he died

What one man's life could be worth

I wonder what would happen to this world.