Choices          

by Ursula Shepherd   
                       

Sometimes there are no choices. 
Life is made of days set one upon another
no thoughts of what might be or how it might be better. 

Just what is: changing soiled sheets, crying in the bath,
listening to stories, not true, holding up the man 
who still – almost – remembers you.

You wish for places you could go: Tahiti, Senegal, 
Rarotonga. But there are no choices; this is the place
you are, and courage is a word best held at bay.

You simply call across the time there is,
cry out exhausted in the tub, “Lord, please. 
Just get me through another day.”


* * * * *

Ursula Shepherd is a biogeographer, ecologist and sometime essayist and poet. She has spent a lifetime exploring, celebrating the wondrous lifeforms found here on planet Earth, and finding joy in the beauty and power of words. She has written a book, Nature Notes (Fulcrum Press) occasional essays, and poems in Unbroken, Grim and Gilded and in Minnow.