Riding the Light

Poet Mary Oliver asks,

“What will you do with your one wild life?”

So I came to thinking about how un-wild my life had become

As it lived, how it loved, why it closed doors so quietly

          sometimes the people being closed out did not even know.

I came to no life-altering conclusions save the one that altered it first:

Whose life has ever been theirs?

          Knowing that set me up to understand there were many Masters to serve, some I chose my own self. There were also Those who chose me.

          Now one by one, I begin the Divestiture

The Departure. The Conclusion Protocol ~ ah! (As many flowery ways to say “die” as flowers on a grave!)

Life deepened on me. I ripened from seed to nut to blossom to fruit.

Now to firewood? To blaze along a horizon between worlds?

Someone told me, “Don’t worry about it.” I never heard the “don’t.”

Until I stopped saying it to myself as I no longer did worry.

I lived rightly. I bowed my head in all the right places.

          Remember, I had no manuals, only instincts & the Baltimore Catechism.

Betimes I was feral myself, I tasted of earth all over, and salt.

Is this the Wildness she speaks? Is it enough? I can’t care now for it is what was.

I walked the outer fringes of two worlds many times, perhaps always do.

I lived both vicarious & victorious; all life alluded to this me.

I made familiar choices until I chose to venture around that.

I was given to make it up as I went along, imagination my only tool.

Carol Borsello      10/15/21