•  In conversation with a friend or loved one, describe how you make decisions. Tell the story of an important threshold you faced that stretched the way you usually make decisions and how that enabled you to get closer to life.

Facing the River

FACING THE RIVER

I have crossed this river before.

I almost drowned. One other time

it carried me to a new life. What now?

It’s moving so fast I can’t see myself.

Only the cries of others in the fast

water, pleading for me to come or

stay or go away. Funny how light itself

never moves but everything it touches

never stays the same. That’s been my

love affair with truth. I wonder about

so many. Where is the sweet troubled

man who used to be my friend? Did

we stop caring? Or did the current

sweep us in different directions?

Nothing stands still in the water.

Or in life. Is that why we try so hard

to hold on? I keep breaking off what is

false so the irreducible thing at center

can show itself. I wish I knew the irreducible

thing’s language. I know it’s

trying to tell me something. Perhaps

the same thing for years.

Being Human

BEING HUMAN

We’re born with an aftertaste of Oneness

and a thirst for weeds and earth, as the angel

deep within us needs our hands, to make a

dance of all this hurt. It has us reach beyond

our limits, till we love like a planet though

we’re constantly confused. We carry lightning

in a thimble of skin and bones and dreams.

We carry everything that matters in a plan

that doesn’t last, while the stars pulse

to fill us, the way a candle fills a room.

As Moonlight

AS MOONLIGHT

(For Ann)

When we began, we were eager to be loved.

Everything held wonder in a secret place

that was shouting like a waterfall.

I can’t tell the whole story here

except to say that thirty years have passed

and we have been friends, lovers, have

saved each other’s lives, been ex-lovers,

difficult friends, have felt discounted

and betrayed, have almost walked away,

have gasped onto the shore of forgiveness,

have found love in other eyes, and harshly

and sweetly, we have been worn

free of all names. We don’t know

what to call each other.

Now, states away,

you are losing your sight

and I am creaky in the knees.

And I have cried in the midst of telling

what can’t be told, sitting before strangers,

catching myself saying, “I found her injecting

a syringe in an orange. When I asked,

she said she was practicing how to

keep me from getting nauseous.”

No way to sum up thirty years.

Or being pulled back into life. Or

being forced to bow to the changes

wrought by God’s fugitive, time.

How do we talk to anyone about