Oh, my friends,

I have been reading your poems
and can see

how little water I have to add
to this sea. I pick up one of

your books, read a page,
put it down. There is no

story I can tell, no insight
I have to offer that is not

trumped by two hundred 
of your own. This is not

complaint but acknowledgment
of how much of my time

has been wasted in
contemplation of my own

need to communicate
private messages that in fact

are no more than common
firecrackers — loud, each mildly effective

on its own, terrible when taken
in their entirety;

all you do is so much more
than what I do and now all I have

is this one story of how I personally
must pass from consideration

now that I have made this 
connection. Oh, my friends,

you have done
all I thought I might do

when I started — yet
I am not envious.  It has

been done and for that reason
I am satisfied to write 

that last tale of how
I am preparing to pass on —

the only one only I can tell,
the only one that rocks only me

upon its slight waves.

To love
is to follow darkness
within you toward
its source, is to learn to see it
as shadow caused by light
and not as a scattering
of huge gray boulders
and smaller stones
impeding you. To love

is to see those shadows as 
signposts on your way
to Light, as shapes to be
learned and appreciated
for what they are; not 
to remove them, as they give
you context and heft,

but to step over and around them
or scale them as needed; 
to use them as platforms
from which to view Light
within you.  To love, then,

is to journey across. To
work a path toward.  To keep
a blank map within, and then
to fill it in.