I know when people aren’t right

places aren’t right

and what I’m doing

isn’t right

it’s a sense that my time is being murdered

I am just letting the genocide happen

like a complicit citizen.

this feeling is strongest

when I’ve filled the hours of my day with work

and I neglected to do

the most important thing

or I’ve spent too much time

in a conversation that takes from me

at a place

that would be better

empty

rather than filled with

talking heads.

a calling keeps whispering to me

it’s an image of who I would like to be

a vision

for my future.

My hero, is me

and he’s never boring to spend time with

it’s easy to get caught up

with people’s rules

of how to be—

and where I can understand

some of them

I wouldn’t want to be

any of them.

it’s easy to get confused by all the paths

all the ways…

likely,

the heroes we worship

will be boring

after two or three meetings.

a calling is

an old man

Not the man

who plays the same round of golf

on the same golf course

for 20 years

after retirement

but the man

who walks in the wide-open world

where it’s dangerous

where he has to be dangerous

to get old

and he tells stories

about who he is

who people are

and he understands

the unseen forces

are on his side

Even, at the end

if there’s an empty

hole

and nobody gathered around

the forces are there

they called him

back home.