Learning about Myself

I’ve been reading a book of poems
Sent to me by a friend
Trying to learn how it’s done
From someone who knows himself well

It’s a sobering experience
To witness the assured presence
Of a quality I wish
To develop in myself

But the evidence is clear enough
It’s not a single seed that
I can water and nurture in the backyard
Of the person I’ve come to be

I can’t pretend that a lifetime
Of facing things, of deeply fathoming
What has been learned
Can be borrowed

Can be fashioned or resurrected
Out of another’s example
Just because I am trying out
A new way of being me

But when morning sunlight
Reflecting off the surface of a lake
Lights up a green canoe inside the boathouse
I don’t have to stay stuck on shore forever