The Way

 

Traveler, there is no path.
The Way is the path.
Let us walk forward, as the path
unfolds under our feet, he said,
though all the while he knew
we were on it together only briefly.

Yes, there was pain.
I had believed I needed someone
to complete me, but it was by
traveling alone that I grew whole.

We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
I learned that love is not someone
giving to me; it was in giving to others
that my spirit was set free.

There is the path we see before us,
familiar, recognizable, and there is
the way under the way, which is
the soul's slow, incremental passage.
Everything I need is right here
- in flawed abundance, the poet said.
We are a single salmon swimming upstream
among a thousand others.
We are one feather on the wingtip
of a flying bird. We are wave
and ocean both. We are even,
sometimes,
Sky.

I walk the way under the way 
in trust, in gratitude:
a cloud, a leaf, a weed,
here as briefly as
a butterfly.

Inspired by "The Way Under the Way" by Mark Nepo - the italicized words are his.