She saw it before he spoke The weight he carried on yesterday’s bones She saw And she waited
He fell on a Tuesday She watched from the doorway Not from indifference But from a love that knows The ground is also teacher
The wisdom is in the when The wisdom is in the when Not too soon, not too late The wisdom is in the when
On Wednesday he stopped bargaining On Thursday he stopped asking to be saved On Friday morning early He put one hand on the earth And pushed
She was already there Not to lift him Never to lift him But her hand found his elbow At the exact moment His own strength Was almost enough
The wisdom is in the when The wisdom is in the when That narrow place between Almost and not quite That is where she lives
Not the big rescue Not the angel in the whirlwind The neighbor who appears with bread Three weeks later On the ordinary Tuesday When everyone else has forgotten She does not say I understand She puts the bread on the table And sits
Sometimes she does nothing This is the hardest practice To see clearly To love fiercely And to hold still Sometimes the wisdom is in the no Not no from cruelty No from a love so deep It would rather be misunderstood Than rob a soul Of what it came to learn
The wisdom is in the when And sometimes The wisdom is in the no
They say we spend more lifetimes learning this Than any other thing Because this is not a human skill We are perfecting for a human life This is apprenticeship This is what the Taras do
The wisdom is in the when The wisdom is in the when We are learning their trade One clumsy lifetime at a time
“They could not translate it Not to Sanskrit. Not to Pali Not to the Chinese That carried every other wisdom Across the mountains This word defeated them all Chrestotes Because it is not a concept It is a skill And skills don’t fit in dictionaries.”