Walking.

It’s not a yellow wood, but the road
diverges anyway.
The next step I take
needs must be a choice.

This familiar moment has
held me before, with
more or less or
similar gracelessness.

Each time I come to this
place of choosing,
I reach into the deep
stillness of self

to find the essential truth
my life is a flawed 
effort to express.
From that calm center

comes the next step,
driven by true desire.
I want this movement,
I want this path forward.

Each time I arrive at the
end of automation,
standing before the obscuring veil
of opportunities soon to be abandoned,

I am surprised.
I thought I had chosen,
thought I had found the deepest seat
of my own wishes.

I thought I knew what I wanted,
but it seems I must cast off
another layer of someone else’s hopes
to step forward wearing only my own.

And so again and again,
I come to this place of
two roads and only
one mostly misunderstood self.

I am not concerned with mirrors
or with destinations or masks or measuring:
I am concerned with considering possibilities,
listening for the heart’s whispered guidance, choosing.

And walking.