ready, steady...oh!

on stepping.

Photograph by the author Paul John Dear

My heart, a wet-feathered, wide-eyed hatchling,

trembling in the enormity of your presence.

One claw still in the half broken, half intact shell.

My neoteric becoming and voices still in the shard

whispering, ‘too soon, it is too soon! Stay here.’

But I already have one toe on the bridge. This, a step of

affirmation. Life in all its animate glory. This, pure and

unthought. And so, I make a bow, deep and wholly reverent,

to that which can, and most likely will, break me open, one

way or another. Already has, if truth be told, and be told, it will.

In your absence, the ‘what if?’ has gnawed at my bones and

my undeserving ghost has already begun a search for the fuel

to light the winter fires that companion our cyclic dark-time.

I hold him tenderly and whisper, ‘I’ve got you now.’ He exhales.

Something is different. Calmer. Maybe we are ready? Finally!

A wry smile and a knowing wink, hiding an age of discovery.

Cracked laughter and the birth of a lilting subterranean jig

reverberate in the chasm of our beginning, and that once icy

wind now whistles a new tune of real warmth and familiarity.

We have never, ever been ready. And we have always stepped.

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🎶🎵🎶 Step