What if I had begun my destiny
as someone else?
Never saw the gray eminence
of Sandusky bay?
Heard my brother go off to school.
Listened to my father
play the guitar,
and make bows and arrows.
Look up at the great trains
passing the house.
Hear my mother wail in the night
for dead children.
Would fate have been kinder,
if the wounds had not run so deep?
If war and the dead
had not intervened?
If school had not been so hard,
and the terror of my dreams
so dark?
Perhaps we live only once in eternity.
Would we dare change what happened?
There is nothing random in life,
and having happened,
I still have a choice.
To tell children how much they are loved,
until my voice is hoarse.
To join them
at the level of their trees and mountains.
To cause no regrets
to tear them from their world.
Life is a gift to the infinitely precious,
wherever it leads.