LOVE MORE, FEAR LESS

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

It seems you love this world very much. “Yes,” I said. “This beautiful world.”

And you don’t mind the mind, that keeps you busy all the time with its dark and bright wonderings? “No, I’m quite used to it. Busy, busy, all the time.”

And you don’t mind living with those questions, I mean the hard ones, that no one can answer? “Actually, they’re the most interesting.”

And you have a person in your life whose hand you like to hold? “Yes, I do.”

Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest,

breathing like the ones in the old stories,

who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound,

you come to a place whose only task

is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and

to stop what you are becoming while you do it,

questions that can make or unmake a life,

questions that have patiently waited for you,