There’s a thread you follow.
– William Stafford (“The Way It Is”)
Perhaps it was something your mother said
that dashed the demons, or a quiet reverie
with your father when the mallards rose
above the cattails, dripping from a cloudy
Sabbath sky, or a lover who gave you eyes
to see into others, or those grand epiphanies
that have taken root in your mind, found
fertile ground among the folds of gray
to produce a home to become you.
And when we stray from who we are,
we must hold on to the thread to hear their voices
ring above the din of falsehoods beckoning.