By Ilene Kaminsky
Live quietly with your questions.
Sit still for a spell,
just for now, put yesterday away
with well-deserved tenderness.
Nurture these moments,
like newborns, feed and
swaddle them. Rock them
in the sweet
rhythm of their
slumbering breath.
In this, the only moment
Ever to become infinity’s
reply to the direction of your green
green path, a path
with new ways to go —
some trodden upon, some unknown.
You think of “Nothing”
much like that infant you
carefully once loved.
Why rush to grow?
Time grows long regardless of your
prodding for politeness or
for prodigy. For they,
in minutes of stillness
will grow into our hours.
The answers reveal
themselves only when you’ve
Forgotten to ask “why?”
These questions over
the course of life become like
gems beaded onto a
necklace, weighing you —
Bowing you down
In prayer or in repentance.
Break its clasp
And relinquish all the
heaviness to the ground.
Lift your head up and
open your mouth.
Catch the blessed rain
on your tongue.
What’s keeping you silent as your
Lungs feed on the breath of freedom?
Cut the stones weight from round
Your neck.
Breathe in time with
your child
who holds no answers.
Not even the coolness
of this second is
hindered by what should be and
will never be again.
The answers you
came here to gather
when you were still innocent,
in your open
hands to grab secretly
Like flowers from
Neighboring garden
whose labors
were never yours to own.