A New Spring

Today for the first time in months
the sun was strong enough
for me to sit outside in the afternoon,
sipping a cold drink, my body remembering
a season when the world wanted me

to be alive, to grow. But that was before
all the dying I’ve done—whole futures fallen,
promises left hanging like fishhooks.
Would spring come again, even for me?
And if it did would it find me brave enough
to risk a new seed in the trickster soil?

Who knows what shapes this life might take!
But this I do know: the only regret
is not loving the world
in all the painfully honest ways
that only you can love it.

–From my book, The Wilderness That Bears Your Name