tokens in my path

I find tokens along my path,

Almost any time I ask for them.

Feathers, pretty stones, 

The wing of a luna moth.

I had always thought of them as 

Affirmations, a thumbs-up 

From the universe, reassurance

Of Big Magic.

But here, walking with a tender

Spine and raw hip, fearful

Of what they mean: Lyme,

neutropenia, some bizarre recurrence-

I realize: these tokens, perhaps

They are not gifts themselves

But signposts, pointing 

To the act which made them.

A feather in the path came

From a molt, perhaps, a letting go.

Or, something more painful – a crow’s

Feather, maybe, ripped out while being mobbed.

The luna moth wing is no pretty present,

But tearing death.

The loosing of the body, the

Release of form. 

The tokens in my path are not 

Gifts – the gift is the work they point to.

It has been said so many times:

That which keeps us from God,

Is also our path back.