sometimes
if you move carefully through the forest
breathing
like the ones in the old stories
who could cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves without a sound,
you come to a place whose only task
is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you are becoming while you do it,
questions that can make or unmake a life,
questions that have patiently waited for you,
questions that have no right to go away.
-david whyte