Right or Left

When during the long passage
across the sea of life
do we bear right or do we bear left?
How do we know for sure
what is the best way to go?

Each one of us and no one person spared,
has an inimitable part to play for Shakespeare himself.
Puppet masters and puppets,
triumph and tragedy
playing two sides of the same coin.
Will madness take over the authentic self,
or just when we can feel the prescient illumination
of hope
we tumble down into an obscure rabbit hole
only to find ourselves at the very beginning.

We are here to live with heart,
with greatness,
to fulfill our deepest promises to ourselves
to love, to challenge, to hope
to celebrate and love even harder
the parts that are the hardest to love.
We are here to give and forgive,
to start and finish, to evolve,
to become our truest, our fullest self,
to embrace all that is so alive
and wonderful
and tragic
and incongruous
in this starry universe
we call home.

Let us sing and dance together
on this great Shakespearean stage,
play the parts and move together
through the twisted scripts and plots
that invite us to define who we are
the masters of our own fate
the cosmic heroes
and the beneficiaries of love and loss.
Together we reach past the heartache,
cry together
clutch hands tightly
and hold each other up.
Together, we carry the light of humanity forward
never knowing for sure
whether to bear right or to bear left.