I want to say to you
that I do not know the difference
between repentance and redemption.
You said one and I thought the other.
Maybe that is because, for me,
I will be delivered from my guilt
and atoned for my sins by repentance,
by taking another path.
I have thrown thousands of rocks into rivers
as we did today. And I wonder
if they have slid down the Black,
tumbled through the Chagrin,
and ended up all in one place.
I wonder if they have piled up,
every regret on top of every sin,
onto some silty floor.
And every day, they are baptized,
made smoother and smoother
by the gentle friction of time.
And I wonder, if, every summer,
some young girl wanders out into
that stream, some solemn brown eyed saint,
to stand upon the dam of my contrition,
so that she can be on something sturdy,
but not quite in the water, running.
Her bare tan feet on my life,
her small but able toes
curled over stone, as she faces where
the water is going,
not where the water has been.
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