I am a life in progress.
Even toward the end
I’m not sure how to begin.
I forget more than I learn,
so I have forgotten three lives already,
and I’ve made up two,
like bibliography to a soul.
When it comes down to it,
when I sit by myself among the bushes,
when I hide behind a tree,
I admit,
I’ve figured nothing out.
Not the brightest bulb in the class.
When the great book was passed,
I read it back to front,
upside down,
and marked everything.
Note, I must go back to that passage,
I must ask about that,
that’s something worth quoting,
that I don’t get.
When suddenly
my teacher, the wind,
blew the book from my hands,
and I lost it down a bluff
too high to climb,
too deep to explore,
and went without.
So for many years,
I carried a book bag with a rock in it,
and made up stories,
and gathered in lines of people
for God knows what.
Because life was a great puzzle to me.
It kept whispering to leave the pack,
go off by myself,
invite the wall to sing to me,
the sun to dry my tears,
the moon to gather up my dreams.
Go with the silence of the river
running inside me.
The one that had no name
but traveled from forever to forever,
and promised me
that my sail was my heart.
And the life I owned
was shared by the world,
the great shore.
All in progress,
all writing poems in the dunes,
and not to worry
if someone asked how I was doing.
Ok, I could answer,
I’m a life in progress,
and they would leave me in peace.