Out of My Way

Magi, Gentile astrologers, go out of their way to worship you.

A leper, a Samaritan, reverses course to thank you.

What’s in my way?

What insistent demands, confining customaries,

time-eating curiosities

keep me from going out of my way

to find you?

Am I in my own way?

Like the Herods of state and church

do I search the scriptures

and then stay put,

voiding Dawn’s cradle

and Jordan’s cleansing flood.

This morning, a wonder:

a hummingbird perched

away from its sugary station,

until I returned from my walk.

Could going out of my way

mean stopping to wonder:

‘which way now?’

Spirit hovering,

signs pointing

to a life most worth living.

shifting from questions to quest,

from insight

to fork in the road.

What will going out of my way to find you

mean for me today?

this particular span of hours,

this season, these remaining years

with their soporific grooves,

simmering temptations,

insipid tyrannies...

until forever spent.

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