SPRING RAIN

Someone weeps within today
Weeps for paths untrodden
Vistas never seen
Friendships dissolved,
Conversations unspoken
Books unread
Poems never written
Babies unborn
Beloveds passed on.

The tears come gentle in the mystery
Of choices made so subtly
They’re not lodged in memory:
A contraction here
A reaching there like
Shifting weight in a good canoe
Until I am downriver
And the banks gone by
seem frozen in time
While I drift on.

Who weeps?
Who chooses?
Who shifts?
I and not I
Eye and tear
Boat and current…
Raindrops passing
Through wet ground
Soaking new roots.