The Gumption to Swerve

Has there ever been a moment when everything in you said “shrink” and, instead, you expanded?

A photo I took at the Grace Cathedral Labyrinth in San Francisco

Has there ever been a moment
when everything in you said
“shrink”
and, instead,
you expanded?

In between those two moments
existed a split second –
invisible until right then,
when the faint outline of a new possibility
was perceptible –
and with it,
the gumption
to swerve.

Maybe defiantly, maybe gracefully,
neither disposition diminishing
the miracle –
a threshold between
pattern and choice –
a tiny synaptic restoration.

Imperceptible to any
unit of measure available
to the human mind,
the heart and the body radiate
with its magnitude,
its depth.

If we line up our
split second moments
yours, mine, theirs
could we somehow perceive the faint outline of
a new possibility,
collective muscle memory
of the gumption
to swerve?