Choices

Choices

On the last day of summer, you can walk around a ball park,
or you can become the silence you find at the empty field.

I listen to what you are saying,
when you tell me I’m not who I used to be.

I hear you lighting candles and putting on a favorite song,
anxiously swaying to the music, awaiting a knock that might never come.

I sometimes allow myself to be human, to fall in love,
to die for the sake of a holy name, to allow my anger to come from a place that wants to heal me.

Every morning, I rise out of my bed or I drift back to sleep,
searching for how to ask for the things I’m unsure if I need.

Louder can drown leaders. I’ve mistaken never for forevers and
Forevers have become nevers. We mishear a lot of blessings and curses.

Even in vacant places, there is noise for
which no words will manage

The alarming caw of the crow, the parables of earth and a flinging rain,
the sense startling untranslatable elements of life baking like bread,

filling our surroundings with choices of the world
whether we choose to find these truths and speak them or not.