Until some weeks ago,
Walking to school
Block by block each morning
And home again in evenings
The onerous weight
Of consuming, circular preoccupations
Attended me-a looming, faithful,
And continual companion.

And it so intrigued me one early hour
To feel lighter walking toward the dawn
And later lighter still toward sunset
As, one by one, as blocks passed by
Weighty griefs took aloft
To find more fitting homes.

…One, the longing for a departed pair of arms
That held this former infant close
Near a handsome face,
Which slowly said my full name
As I gazed at two figures
In the master bedroom mirror.

…Another, the caustic remorse
Of a little boy proclaiming himself
An unworthy protector
For a littler admiring shadow
So desperate to make himself understood
To jeering children in the schoolyard

…And another, the desolate ground,
Once so well tended with aspirations
That had come seasonably to seed
Over decades in a classroom,
Then sown, soon to sprout
And bloom in myriad hues,
Though, too soon,
The searing orange heat
Of envious spirits
Turned all to ashy gray.

…The shared course down life’s river
With one so fond,
And later a second even fonder:
Each time the flowing waters’
Swift, competing currents
Crashed and diverged
Till foaming rapids tore asunder
The souls that might have drifted
Lovingly together to the sea.

And as I, less weighted, walked my blocks
To and from my daily mission,
My lungs swelled…

…With words of adored saints
Who sustained me
In the heaven of my early days–

…With verses of compassion–

…With thanks for my abode–

…With zest for what ignites my soul.

As I pass these blocks this morning,
I sing without the blocks
That for too long stopped my voice,
And will, God willing,
Never silence me again.