Make life your own; sugar and flour and butter and roll the dough, bake it on a stone set in a bonfire blazing in your grandmother’s backyard. Take care, and plant several thousand seeds; watch your forest bloom across the land as a hatchling grows wings. Be brave, be sure to reach for stars beyond your reckoning, learn carpentry, build your stairway to the high, and scoop your bit of heaven, cleave it free. Falling is a reverberation of symmetry; jump for joy and leap lovingly, dearly hang onto comets, the manes of wild mares, hands, the tails of dreams; then, let go, and land into the rivers, the asphalts, the downy beds, the rustling greens. Send your letters, proclaim when your heart aches and grieves; write down the words of your mind, and paint your holies. Sing, and allow your rooms to breathe; open your windows and feel the winds whisper and stream. Rush to meet your failures, collect your woundings; bury them out along the roots of the trees, and water them kindly, rub your scars with aloe and lavender and vanilla, oats from your breakfast in the early morning. Tell their stories. Break bread with your fears, and turn your back on your envies. Face the sun. Hollow out your tongue, and play it like a flute; hymn your spirits from your toes, and let them arise as ghosts, laden with baskets of vision, and hopes. Make it, with your soul, then extend your weathered palms forward, and invite the world

to go for a walk with you.