Twenty years of faith
have led me here
to this precipitous place
right at the edge
of my dream
If the wind shifts rightly
I can close my eyes
and savor its perfume
This dream of mine,
a writer’s life
I was born to
live but have yet to attain
so I walk here as a ghost
in the burning daylight
one foot in each world,
yet not fully an inhabitant of either
My refusal to relent
is sheer stubbornness
bred in me from generations
of those who did it the hard way
those who, I pray,
in some way walked
their hope with them,
all the way to the grave.