What is Ours to Do?

The woman took the shirt off her back
and bundled the koala up
and ran him from the flames.

A man handed her a water bottle,
and she bathed his burns and drove him
to the hospital. 
 
He was crying, she said.
She hadn’t known they cried.
 
But
a week later
he died. 
 
His keepers said the burns that he’d sustained 
before she risked her life for his
would flame his days with too much pain 
to be worth living,
so they helped him into night. 
 
Was it worth it?
 
Should she have left him be?
To curl in the upper branches of a tree?
until the fire claimed him?
 
Did her courage add a thing to his life 
except an extra week of suffering?
Did he understand
at least
that someone tried?
Did that make a difference?
 
I don’t know.
 
I do know why she did it.
Who can bear to watch
and not to move?
But perhaps the time has come
to reject the humility 
of the little act of kindness.