The First Steps and The Last
By Jane Tawel
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The first steps are the hardest;
I really don’t want to run this race.
My breath struggles at the start
and every aspiration
becomes the hardest to catch.
The last mile that I run
(and this is all by choice, mind you)
is pretty darn hard too –
Maybe I could just walk it?
Or crawl?
Or quit?
*
I wonder if the last lap of this race
I’ve called my Life,
will be as hard for me
as my first lap?
Birthed into struggle
from the womb of the bed I’ve made,
will I run well the race towards Death?
Or will my passing on The Path
be the painful struggle
the agonizing effort to breathe
a battle waged as all the last steps
of the last journey I make towards Home?
*
Or will Life’s Finish Line instead
be the first lap
of the next journey which
will no longer be any kind of race at all.
Will that final step
always be a breathing into
a beginning —
effortless, weightless, sweat-less-
cleaned from the placenta of Death
into the Quest beyond questions,
Stilled and Resting, Peaceful, Floating
Reborn, restarted, re-breathed,
Dancing forward
into New Life?
*
© Jane Tawel, 2026
Jane Tawel 