to live by

This is an excerpt from one of my favourite poems of all time. These are the sentiments that urge me forward, the words that I keep at the back of my head. 

[...]

One day I'll come swimming 

beside your ship or someone will

and if you hear the siren

listen to it. For if you close your ears

only nothing happens. You will never change.

I don't care if you risk

your life to angry goalies

creatures with webbed feet.

You can enter their caves and castles

their glass laboratories. Just

don't be fooled by anyone but yourself.

[...]

One afternoon I stepped

into your room. You were sitting

at the desk where I now write this.

Forsythia outside the window

the sun spilled over you

like a thick yellow miracle

as if another planet

was coaxing you out of the house

--all those possible worlds!--

and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics.

I cannot look at forsythia now 

without loss, or joy for you.

You step delicately

into the wild world

and your real prize will be 

the frantic search.

Want everything. If you break

break going out not in.

How you live your life I don't care

but I'll sell my arms for you,

hold your secrets forever.

If I speak of death

which you fear now, greatly,

it is without answers.

Except that each

one we know is 

in our blood.

Don't recall graves.

Memory is permanent.

Remember the afternoon's

yellow suburban annunciation.

Your goalie

in his frightening mask

dreams perhaps

of gentleness.

-from To a Sad Daughter by Michael Ondaatje