After lunch with a friend,
walking home solo on what promises
to be a 100-degree day, you pause
under a maple shading the sidewalk
and look up.

Under the sign restricting parking
towers a bit of all-caps encouragement:
BEGIN

It does not matter what needs to be started,
but clearly, something does.

As you move slowly back into the afternoon
of your life, stop here and there to watch
a bee, low to the ground, searching,
whether for pollen or water you can’t tell,

as the beacon resonates through
your buzzing brain:
You begin anew every moment,
with every footfall.

No matter how mobile,
no matter how limited,
one foot, then the other,
even if you hobble, even
if you cannot walk at all.

you begin again and again and again,
and so reminded,
you do.