Will I be a Hero or a Coward?

Painting by Lorraine Rigby. 2016

May I be blessed in knowing the wrongs I have done, 

as waves break against the cliff face with relentless truth.

 

May I stand upon that precipice, longing for what is real,

before comfort steals away my longing.

 

May the innocence within me be awakened,

as the debris of my naïveté falls with a thunderous clarity.

 

May the earth beneath my feet hold me steady in this hour,

even as the horizon darkens with the consequences I have set in motion.

 

Will I fall, like the coward beneath the weight of my mistakes,

or will I rise, like the hero who dares to change?

 

No philosophy can teach me how.

It can only bring me to the edge of choice.

 

For there lies in each soul a coward and hero,

the ancient tension between safety and truth.

 

And there, at that inner edge,

our becoming waits.