What We Circle

 What We Circle

I’ve consulted the Muses

and they tell me the path is circular.

We circle the wagons,

circle the tipis,

circle the fire,

the frightened child,

the stories we tell ourselves.

 

We’d circle the buffalo

if we could—

round them with our bodies,

our hunger,

our prayers,

our ancient need

to make a boundary

between us and the wild.

 

We name ourselves

inside closed, tight circles:

 

family,

tribe,

nation,

faith,

friend,

enemy.

 

Ancient rituals

turn and return.

We walk the same ground

our ancestors walked,

drawing invisible rings

in the dust.

 

Universally,

we practice in circles—

in ironic, toxic,

tangible realms,

flawed to the extreme,

yet infinite as the stars

that seem to wheel above us.

 

The circle forgives no beginning.

The circle promises no end.

 

It is the mouth of the well,

the eye of the storm,

the wheel beneath civilization,

the coin in the hand,

the planet beneath our feet.

 

We worship the sun

and the moon.

 

We raise stones

into circles

and then circle the stones,

dancing around what we cannot explain,

dance beneath an eclipse

of one circle passing

across another.

 

Perhaps this is why

we keep returning:

 

to the fire,

to the wound,

to the altar,

to the argument,

to the person we swore

we would never become.

 

Do not dismiss circles easily.

 

Not in secret.

Not in anger.

Not in some extreme fit of rage.

 

For even rage

has a circumference.

 

Even grief

comes around.

 

Even our complaints—

our grievances,

our midnight theories,

our magnificent human talent

for bitching—

move in circles.

 

Around and round

we go,

 

inventing new roads

that somehow lead us back

to the same old center.

 

And perhaps the profoundest circle

is this:

 

we leave the beginning

believing we are leaving,

 

only to discover

we have been traveling

toward it all along.