How to take that turn, to touch so deeply, to stride blindly into the heart of my poet so far that I not return, that I become her and abandon all ambition for other and allow her light to be so bright she blinds who I thought I was…

How to be the bold artist, pressing paint so wildly into my canvas as she paints the path of life, daring to create despite the fading honor of her gift, to touch because of my willingness, to soften into the potential of that perfect stroke forming that perfect moment for myself but mostly for those who witness…

How to be the brave mother, opening to her deepest longing even as she is discarded by a world built around status and power, she carefully stretches my creative potential into the most magnificent love and cries forth the fruit of my limbs into a whole new body to touch toes onto Earth and press wonder out through mind….

How to be the explorer, leaving society at my back, pressing forward into the distinct beauty of climbing up the mountain in the height of effort, breathing thin wide air, knowing stillness that speaks beyond words, and examining the fragments of fullness at high elevation even as wall street marches on and makes so much of the future of my people…

How to be the lover, greatest risk of all, opening those places to another and receiving touch that can hurt so openly, rocking me into the greatest uncertainty, falling from the highest cliff as I follow the same impulse burning the stars into life's wandering surrender into future life…

How to trust the cosmos so fully that I dissolve into wonder at the exact shape of the broken flower, the internet, the layers of human mind, breath, moments of holding, and the impossible pictures of stars and galaxies that must be the conspiracy of the best artists because I keep being told that this is really a human universe…

Maybe the question is how to be all of these and still press truth and driving devotion out through the weaves of bureaucracy, like the lamb up for slaughter, risking all of the above for a glimmer of the light I feel buried in the human collective....