“Our very life depends on continuous acts of beginning. But these beginnings are out of our hands; they decide themselves.
Beginning precedes us, creates us. There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning.
More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could."
John O’Donohue


20 April 2015, Alcatraz

Echo

It seems as likely
that what Narcissus came to,
wandering the overgrowth without destination,
was that waiting well of sadness
in his own heart,
the prison of remembering.
It was the sinking, not the surface,
that lured him in.
And he couldn't help but stare
into the eyes of someone so near and unfamiliar,
into the dark pond spawning ample life
of brief tenure.
Flowering on the muddy banks of loss
is just the way of tenacious things.

Though you can't help but wish he had known 
her ruinous beauty, 
tremor of breath,
depth calling to depth.