Mile Marker

How do you do it? I want to know how you put them all through, how you worked through the fevers and chills, the scratched knees and spills, how you found any time to sleep or brush your teeth or sprint to the store or pay bills or make sure everyone got their due. How do you do it? I want to know what you did when lack was the only thing that came through, when the promise of finishing turned into a vapor of dreams. How did you do it? How did you cross over from deep in the valley and across that forbidding range whose sides are sheer and whose crests are covered with ice and snow— How did you do it? I want to know what you did when you couldn’t stop what was coming, when bridges vanished and signposts pointed only to rain and more rain. I want to know how to breathe when fog shields the road, how to get to that spot in the middle of the park where the bench or the swing looks over the water and the buds spill like moons on the stones.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.