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
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