There is something more to come.
—Dorianne Laux

It’s the amorphous, pliable, sticky
something that stops us,
clenches us in fear,

the what-ifs mounting like bricks
mortared in place to keep us in
or something out.

But oh, dear ones, what if
we took up that gooey something,
held it tenderly in our hands

like a newborn learning to suckle,
and whooshed all hope, all love
into it, praising its sweetness,

even as we have no earthly
idea what it will become?
We cannot know. We can only

hold all the somethings as we
ourselves are held by the seen
and unseen. We, too, are

some things. We, too, can
embody kindness, listen fully
and well, we who people

this whirling speck of a planet
in a greater galaxy of stars,
stellar remnants and dust.

•••

(With thanks and admiration to Julie Woodside, Bowen practitioner
and writer, who works with moms and their tiny babies learning to nurse.)