Live With Your Questions

By Ilene Kaminsky

Live quietly with your questions.

Sit still for a spell,

just for now, put yesterday away

with well-deserved tenderness.

Nurture these moments,

like newborns, feed and

swaddle them. Rock them

in the sweet

rhythm of their

slumbering breath.

In this, the only moment

Ever to become infinity’s

reply to the direction of your green

green path, a path

with new ways to go —

some trodden upon, some unknown.

You think of “Nothing”

much like that infant you

carefully once loved.

Why rush to grow?

Time grows long regardless of your

prodding for politeness or

for prodigy. For they,

in minutes of stillness

will grow into our hours.

The answers reveal

themselves only when you’ve

Forgotten to ask “why?”

These questions over

the course of life become like

gems beaded onto a

necklace, weighing you —

Bowing you down

In prayer or in repentance.

Break its clasp

And relinquish all the

heaviness to the ground.

Lift your head up and

open your mouth.

Catch the blessed rain

on your tongue.

What’s keeping you silent as your

Lungs feed on the breath of freedom?

Cut the stones weight from round

Your neck.

Breathe in time with

your child

who holds no answers.

Not even the coolness

of this second is

hindered by what should be and

will never be again.

The answers you

came here to gather

when you were still innocent,

in your open

hands to grab secretly

Like flowers from

Neighboring garden

whose labors

were never yours to own.