It is a courageous and rare thing:
to stand in the middle of a crowded marketplace
or a city street
or a throbbing festival
or an ecstatic congregation
or a close-knit family
and to hear oneself only
to be able to decipher one’s still small voice
from amongst others
who speak, call, cry, yell, laugh, dream out loud

The hardest part now is walking alone
through this forest
No sound but my characteristic steps
Naïve, exposed and barefooted
I walk alone
Over each unforeseen hill
Around each unknowable bend
Into and out of each sunken valley
Through each tree-choked thicket
For each and every hurt and hope within me
I walk alone
Towards the bright and open field
That must surely lie before me
I met you once at the trail head
We walked some distance together
Onto the cedar pathway
I do wonder now
Which map you carried

Seblé tells me gursha, hand feeding
Follows the Ethiopian saying
those who eat from the same plate will not betray each other
Good, clean hands reach for small bowls
Containing the messy wonder
Of curried chicken, potatoes, beans, and lamb in berbere sauce
Injera strains to hold back lentils and spicy beef
Already spilling onto happy nervous fingers
Unaware that this meal will soon be difficult to swallow
We reach faithfully for connection
And towards wide-opened mouths

I woke before dawn
done with it all
As numb and fogged over
as the waning Georgia moon.
Bending morning muscles
beneath a canopy
of mountain laurel and oak,
I hear her rambling
toward Sautee-Nacoochee.
She came from
last night’s rainstorm
across Yonah mountain.
Residual daughter
of eruption and fire.
She persists westward
with eyes fixed on Atlanta.
Even as she is hushed
and nearly imperceptible,
She is deft and dodging
Face-first against moss and stone
and branches caked with
fallen leaves.
With resigned determination
She presses forward
To some final arrival.
By tomorrow morning,
even before light breaks
she will spill herself whole
into the Chattahoochee River.
Restored and still
at last.