One way or another, you get full.

Mind and body pick up souvenirs
some of your choosing, some say
you have all the choice, but 
consider bystanders, and know
we are moved by a larger hand.

Still, it seems you can rank them
when you wake one morning, replete
and see the future, deer and oleander
gliding ducks, silver path of jets
sort it out - what will you carry, how far?

You start rinsing in cold water, blessed
and shuddering about the fortune 
that lands you in this place of many rivers
Nianansipia, you might call it, a nod to history
all you care to shoulder, care to push/

Jars of cacti spill their cool green 
scent of meagre feasting past, and you
decide to fast, from time to time to measure
and flex the connection to devotions
not your own. That bird wears camouflage

listen. You learned all this. And now
with astonishing possible paths ahead
and all you’ll ever need, arrayed in morning
understanding, that the world is symphonic
and wondrous, itself replete, go ahead.

Choose to travel light, exhaling love.

Twice blessed, once in the getting and now
in releasing the pain, deciding the meaning
of every stitch, scar, bent bone and spotted 
skin, those kicks to the heart didn’t break it
other than open, the better to power your lift-off.

Glide like a duck; you have living yet to do.

Image courtesy of Alain Audet on pixabay.com