And if it turns out
the rules we’ve been playing by
are not the real ones,
if it turns out
the object of the game
is not what we thought
and all our cheering on
and all our disappointments
all this time
have been askew
from how the actual score was counted

We may find
we still have made
progress we weren’t noticing —
skills attained, if faultily employed,
and gains that came
from bringing our best efforts
to what we thought, till now,
had been the game

And then we’ll have a new focus,
and then the way we move will change
as we employ a more attuned alignment
and stretch into our fuller range.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 20, 2017