It’s a long road.
This is what you do.
You’ve worked to get here.
Maybe training for a marathon,
or working for justice.
Maybe parenting.
People don’t get it,
why you do this,
why you do it and do it,
why the early rising,
the repeated drills,
the ceaseless effort.
They don’t get why I cheer
so loud, get choked up,
make a fool of myself.
You give yourself
to something greater,
to the long road, and your soul,
taken up, is enlarged,
your presence deepened.
Changed, you live in a changed world.
Andrea nailed the Boston Marathon.
Tomorrow she’ll return
to her cancer patients,
to the long road,
with love and guts.
And already I am changed.
—April 17, 2018