Each day I look for signs
to know which way to go.
I believe they are all around me, yet,
they are written in letters I cannot read
like curious scripts from foreign lands.

How do I learn the language of signs
when I've missed so many before?
What stumbling steps have I taken
on weedy paths into frightening woods
when all I wanted was a simple life?

There is a child I once knew
who laid on the summer grass
looking up into the clouds above
wondering that they could be so far away -
unreachable, forever floating as in dreams.

I have thought, in all the years since,
that I could catch those clouds
and they would show me the way.
But I did not know the clouds at all
and still I lie, and still I lie.
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Portland, Oregon - December 7, 2022