We are living in a troubled time. Good and evil exist in parallel rivers, but at times one can flood and run over the other, blemishing the flow of the one that leads to the great ocean it is destined for. A friend just sent me an essay he had written titled It’s All Bullshit, which seems to be the case right now, so we must move with caution and patience, but with an iron resolve. He ends his essay with a quote from the Buddha: Few cross over the river. “Most are stranded on this side. On the riverbank, they run up and down.” This really struck me because of a poem I wrote very recently about the riverbank where I spent much of my childhood, asking the river, hoping for deliverance, and in time I got my answer, finding it in myself and delivering to and from myself, with my poems and growing life.

WHAT IT WAS

It was there in the bend

of the river, seen possibly

for the first time,

seemingly carrying me with it

to a possibility imagined

but unknown

appearing in the making,

felt in the river’s curving sweep

on the opposite bank

from where I stood,

struggling to be free

where was it headed,

as I stood there alone,

feeling its movement inside me,

imagining my entry

into another beginning,

felt in that river’s need

to be, to flow freely

for what awaited,

and whatever might be.