Spread your arms wide.
Take it in, all of it. Open yourself
up to closing suddenly, even unexpectedly.

Then remove the doubt
you came with — yes,
even that doubt which kept you
closed to possibility. You lived
without it, after all; you gave up
hope, wonder both dark and wild-lit,
even fear — even fear,
that precursor to all else;
fear, the wide-eyed amazement.
You let it go.

You gave up so much
that you are afraid
of what will replace it.

You find yourself
having forgotten your name,
immersed deep in the indigo ocean
off a coast you don’t recognize;
it’s a night built upon stars.
Your boat’s getting away from you
and you are miles above the bottom.
You wouldn’t know the bottom if it rose
to greet you, and yet
there must be something down there
to shape this, to hold this.

You have forgotten your name…what a relief!
What ferocious joy is this now?
Who do you dare to become?

This isn’t the end. Only
a new origin, an ecstasy
foaming, fresh in the vast sea;
you are open to it
reforming and refashioning
above inky darkness.

You were born to this.

Will now the body down
until it breaks or
shatters with cosmic force
on the sidewalk.

Hold the mind intact until it happens then
let go the last participant
until it is parked and perfect
and there is little to say.

Sit there. Stabilize until the world ends
like a neighbor. Tell
it to people — tell them
an explosion doesn’t matter,

that it doesn’t matter how many die. But it does,
it does.  It is of utmost importance.
It stops mattering the moment
the last victim dies:

you see how peace comes to the face,
how it relaxes. You see
how it begins to manifest in the earth
and sky, are struck by it. 

You unwind, let it go.
Whatever cataclysm follows, you let it go
on and on.  It’s not yours to follow.
You were its engine — no more. Let go.

Let go and let God take it. You 
were always reluctant. Now let God
do its part. Whatever you end up
calling it.  However it answers.

I throw my hands at
the boxing shade before me.

If I were a rich man
I’d hire a champion
as it’s too large a challenge,
I tell myself.  

I am
far from rich, like most
just drifting  through,
and these hands
I used to depend on
don’t clench right
for that work — 
not anymore.  Not sure
they ever did.  

I swing on
the vaporous.  I am 
bound to lose, but not yet,
I tell myself;

that time
I connected  —
I felt its mist on my skin
as I passed through
and for once that was revival
more than icy warning.

Having flurried at the hands:

were they snow,
were they vapor,
were they something else?
I have lost touch
with what I’m assumed
I’ll connect with.

I’m comfortable for now,
but wait.  

Just wait.

The status was no longer
easy, a relaxed nervous pitch;
an eventual result could be
failure, could be catastrophe,
could be nothing much at all.

The status reached over the edge.
No one coaxed it to point in one way;
instead it demanded we go either direction,
urged us to choose a way and follow it,
then stepped aside and serenely refused to choose.

I sat by tingling with the status.
I say I sat and did not worry about who would respond.
I sat and did not respond to the storm of urgency
that followed the elevated status. It was my choice
and only mine. I chose, and there was distant thunder.