Alice B. Fogel

Balance is everything, is the only way to hold on. I've weighed the alternatives, the hold as harbor: It isn't safe to let go. But consider the hover, choices made, the moment between later and too late. Hesitation is later, regret too late. You can't keep turning and turning, or expecting to return. This earth is not a wheel, it is a rock that erodes, mountain by mountain. And I have been too soft, like sandstone, but there is a point where I stand without a story, immutable and moved, solid as a breath in winter air. I have seen my death and I know it is my neighbor, my brother, my keeper. In my life I am going to keep trying for the balance, remembering the risks and the value of extremes, and that experience teaches the length of allowable lean; that it is easier — and wiser — to balance a stone as if on one toe though it weigh a hundred pounds than to push it back against the curve of its own world.