Milestones: An Invocation — April 1, 2021
1 min readApr 1, 2021
We’re at a point where we’re beseeched
To inventory everything that we’ve accrued,
Including those abstractions only we can count as gold — -Excursions such as this are singular.
You see, the things that served as footholds
On this free climb we call life — were often moreAnd never less than lifelines — truly literal.
It is not incidental when we land instead of fall.
It is not serendipity that led us here at all.This essay is no paean to the accidental crimes
Nor to the rescues which were truly operational.
Instead, I’d ask for gratitude that forces we can’t nameDispassionately serve as jury and as sober judge -
Advertent as the architect of mazes they can’t see.
To subjugate the Labyrinth is up to you and me.We will not need an abacus to tally up a score.
No matter if we have been on this Earth for less or more
Than some sequential span of days or years.No.The act of self-reflection now is never so discrete
As when we sit alone in crowds in manufactured pews.
We find a weightless silence with a solitary tune.In labs like these we mix or match a rigid formula
To calculate the volume of a melancholy soul,
Intent on finding rank, or rate — if not the rawest score.Take stock. Take time. Take breath.
The best and worst may not have happened yet.
The grades are curved — but you hold the red pen.
