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      December 31, 2017Rondo for the NightMai-Lan Pham

      Let go.
      Change will come,
      and then will come again.
       
      Let go.
      Maybe weep a little
      for what has been lost,
      but then
      there is the lightness
      of having nothing at all.
       
      Let go.
      Your hands were full once
      and, holding on to everything,
      what else did you do?
       
      Let go.
      Feel the cool air on your palms.
      Your feet will move,
      one, and then the other,
      as they have always done.
       
      Let go.
      You will not fall
      with nothing to stay you.
      The body knows what to do.
      The biology and chemistry
      and physics of you
      have existed
      long before you presumed
      to name them.
       
      Let go.
      You are still lungs,
      heart, and brain,
      still tears
      and blood, and song.
      You are all that has gone
      wrong, and all
      that has not.
       
      Let go.
      Who decides
      what is enough?
      Who can tell
      what would have led
      anywhere else but here?
       
      Let go.
      Remember the child you were,
      before the naming and sorting,
      before love, before hate,
      before you learned to count time,
      and in so doing, began to fear
      its eventual loss.
       
      Let go.
      At nightfall
      you walked in dreams
      and saw through darkness.
      The body knows how to find its way.
      Let the body find its way.

      from Poets Respond

      Mai-Lan Pham

      “And the year comes to an end. Not just any year, but the year 2017. As the ‘Year in Review’ retrospectives come in, each one more grim than the last, I wanted to step back from our collective paroxysm of fear. We have done it before. We have always carried on.”

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