V For Surrender Poem by Hans Ostrom

It’s not a question of letting
go but of never having had
hold. It’s not a question.

Our hands are empty often
and at best only transfer,
never own. Possession is

nine tenths of illusion
Hands operate as points
lines use to reach points-next.

We might say all lives
are way-stations to nowhere: The I
passes through the Me,

connecting points to point
of ceasing-to-be. In a
related story, animals

demonstrate how to live
fully engaged even at rest
and without ambition, careers

being a quaint human invention.
Will is quite the contraption,
too—the right tool for a few

jobs but misapplied in most—
an anvil in a solarium.
And so again this Fall

I’ll read the geese. I will
be thinking V as they are
knowing fly. I’ll “let them go.”