Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
—Mary Oliver

•••

I see you there, taking shallow breaths,
as though your lungs can’t expand
to contain the wholeness of you.

But I think they can.

It’s your life, they’re your lungs,
but darling, I have watched you settle
again and again

for things you didn’t really want,
thinking that’s all you get, that the gods
who dole out the intangibles

—great love, scads of money, dream jobs—
passed you by, that you’ve gathered
the leftovers and made

a kind of life. And now, you imagine,
it’s too late. The decades and the losses
have piled up like last fall’s

leaves still mashed against the back fence,
and it’s spring now. Look up to the great
sentinel standing guard out there,

the one spreading wide its sculpted branches
with the tiniest buds preparing to pop
into baby leaves that promise,

every year, to grow into green flags bigger
than your hand. This season is all yours
to design to your specifications.

What will you make of it? What will you
gather in your arms just for you?
I know that you haven’t known

precisely what you want or, if you did,
how to go about getting it. But dear one,
listen: Breathe deeply,

exhale slowly and, with your whole,
far-from-small self, take one shaky,
trusting step into the unknown,

and begin again.

•••

(With thanks to Kai and Fia Skye—and, of course, Mary Oliver—for the inspiration)