Making Passage - Laura Weaver

[Larry Robinson]

Making Passage
 
It’s like swimming across a river
with our eyes closed, this passage 
through the center of our life. 
 
Sometimes we have to navigate
from the inside out—when the stars
hide their light, when we cannot see the bank
 
on the other side, when the hounds
of our past bark on the shoreline
braying their mournful song at our leaving.
 
It is the stillness at the heart of the fire
that guides—the voice of our angel of mercy
that rings out when we look over our shoulder
 
at the old life with longing. You cannot go back,
she says, that place is gone now. And for a moment,
we freeze in the river sure we will drown,
 
forgetting which way is up and down,
forward and back, as the roar of the roiling rapids
pours through us, our heart filled
 
with all the questions that have refused
to leave us alone. And then something
remembers itself, lifts our shoulders above
 
the swirling cauldron of in-between,
and we simply let go of the fight to stay.
The tangled paradoxes flow on through
 
the body of the river, and we are carried
by an invisible current that draws us closer
and closer to the edge of a new world.
 
On our knees, we find root and ground,
give thanks for this fertile soil, seeded
with our dreams, thirsty for our arrival.

	- Laura Weaver