When Words Are the Path

They exhort her to move forward this way or that,

but movement requires spark of light and informed inspiration,
without which no direction can appear.
So when they shut down her "how it looks"
and "how it feels" cascades of words
(flow of inner life interpreting surrounding patterns through reflection),
they cut off oxygen to her brain,
bringing her source of survival to a halt --
demanding that she act, any which way,
dumbly.
She knows too well
that burning questions exist because there are answers to be found
in a world created with order and reason,
and that to lose touch with the emerging pattern
is to fall off the path.