“as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,…

to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water’s edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves.”
What would it mean if my shadow went on? i cry with longing and the truth of it. not because i had given up. but only that there is no way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let me pass. i’ve no idea of how to call an end to the way i’ve come… a letting go of heroic efforts that win through yet deplete? a yet more single-minded focus while the wake leaves disappointments, even chaos? how can this shadow on the waves be enough?
“I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit.”
at the edge here,
listening again for that vow…