Might We?
by Odin Roark

Everywhere, this distant wail of guilt.

We walk together,
you and I, together or alone
amidst clamorous anguish,
many of insufferable conscience
writhing in regret.

So many slippery rocks to navigate,
yet, we cross the stream as one,
even as currents sway footholds,
the contrite willing to stumble,
the arrogant desperately clinging to conquest,
the flow needing but to allow failure as grace.

Oft, so stubborn,
this walk together,
unwilling to just admit
mistakes might feel like a drowning threat,
yet the water wishes only to cleanse.

Some of us will make it to the other side,
weathering slippery rocks,
challenges of balance,
grabbing bush and vine
as tendrils of forgiveness and love,
the many challenges embracing our reach,
giving us opportunity for solace.

Yet…

The fallen float downstream,
mouths agape,
self-forgiveness unthinkable,
even as shore-bound empathy
smiles with compassion.

Nature teaches us all is not what it seems,
but we humans, we sometimes ignore the lessons.

After all…

We indulge in accomplishments, success and failure,
even as forgiveness is but our choice,
struggling with contempt-fraught culpability
made clear the price of victory.

Might it be, we need to…

Reject the self-loathing,
know lessons are waiting,
wanting only the chance
to show the paradox of happy and sad,
that working paradigm that IS.

And lest we forget…

Even the holy
know all is not perfect
in living and failing,
in believing and rejecting
servitude and anathema.

Initiating one's own belief,
becoming true to one's Being,
one's convictions,
one's child-like essence,
is but reaching the far side,
the creek's trickling invitation,
the river's challenge to survive,
the ocean's majestic triumph in your arrival.

This is the all that can so quickly disappear
off the horizons still unknown.

Perhaps…

We might never know
What makes wisdom possible?

From mistakes?

From successes?

From simply discovering and fulfilling one’s purpose,
regardless the risk?

Might we ever know?