There is no reversing this road. The path that bore you here goes in one direction only, every step drawing you down a way by which you will not return.
You thought arrival was everything, that your entire journey ended with kneeling in the place you had spent all to find.
When you laid down your gift, release came with such ease, your treasure tumbling from your hands in awe and benediction.
Now the knowledge of your leaving comes like a stone laid over your heart, the Family.liar path closed and not even the solace of a star to guide your way.
You will set out in fear. You will set out in dream.
But you will set out
by that other road that lies in shadow and dark.
We cannot show you what route will take you home; that way is yours and will be found in the walking.
But we tell you, you will wonder at how the light you thought you had left behind goes with you, spilling from your empty hands, shimmering beneath your homeward feet, illuminating the road with every step you take.
-- Jan Richardson (1967- ) American Methodist artist, poet, and theologian, from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room bouncing from typewriter to piano from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, I found myself in the 'L' section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one more suddenly into the past. A past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. A gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. Or wear one, if that's what you did with them. But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, set cold facecloths on my forehead then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. 'Here are thousands of meals' she said, 'and here is clothing and a good education.' 'And here is your lanyard,' I replied, 'which I made with a little help from a counselor.' 'Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world.' she whispered. 'And here,' I said, 'is the lanyard I made at camp.' 'And here,' I wish to say to her now, 'is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.' --Billy Collins (1941- ), US poet laureate 2001-2003
