Deciding Where to Stop

I've put back in. Boxcars of living things

have gone through me. Daily I ask forgiveness

or permission. Anyone can feel

how we go around and around, locking tighter

into our debts till they become our names.

If I kept walking, I would come the whole

circumference of this lake to where I started

and worry would drive me like its slave around again.

But I choose to stop in Briske's yard.

I sit on crabgrass where Anna's grandson

is flinging crumbs to feed the birds.

The motion is so similar-casting out

to kill and casting out to feed.

In one final shaft of sunlight the boy

shimmers like gold. "Here's bread," he yells

to flickers and nuthatches. ""That's what

we call it. You can call it anything

you want to."