LEAVING

A POEM

Maybe you die in a strange land.

Maybe you bleed out in a creek, unheard.

Maybe you become one with the earth and sand,

On the day the grass does not ask you to stay

And the river loosens your name from its mouth

Even the stones,those patient keepers,

shift their weight and say, go on.

You must go

You pack lightly at first:

a shirt that knows your shoulders,

a book that once saved you,

the small bravery you grew

by watching deer step into light.

With a suitcase in your hand.

Your mother stands in the doorway

holding nothing but your face

inside her eyes.

This is how love blesses,

by not binding.

Down the road, dust rises like prayer.

The birds continue their ordinary singing.

Nothing collapses because you are leaving.

This is the great, astonishing truth.

You will be lonely, yes.

You will be unmade and remade

by weather, by strangers, by hunger.

But you will also be widened.

And now, with everything you carry

the hunger, the ache, the unspent yearning

let the sun and dust

cook it out of your bones.

And one day, far from here,

with different trees leaning close,

you will finally understand.

Yours was a life stepped in to!!