In the end we will find
we have not been betrayed
by our choices. We won’t come to wish
we had known better
and done something else,
even when vast scenarios
play themselves out — if only …

Our coming into ourselves
is not a matter of chance,
of choice, any more than is
the river’s course
or the return of waves
back along their cycle at the shore

We’ll meet again — I’m certain —
We’ll celebrate the beauty of our lives,
the tender light we each shed
on the world and on each other
in every place where we were meant to shine,
undimmed by how we dipped our threads through time.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2019