Ponder the word “percolate.”
Is your first thought the sound
as the percolator is plugged in
(or placed on a burner)
and coffee brews to the tune?
Or do you envision a liquid
finding its way molecule by droplet,
purified or enriched in the process?
It can mean ooze or seep, dribble
or disseminate. But all meanings
represent action, usually slow,
gradual, pervasive.

Have you watched Recovery percolate?
It can surge up, joyfully becoming new,
full of flavor, soothing. Sometimes
we go through the Steps time after time,|
and realize something happened in the process,
that we’ve absorbed the essence of the Steps
and have become something new,
carrying with us the bounty of the Steps.
Sometimes it spreads so slowly, so quietly,
we find person after person change,
renewed, recovered, remade as the essence,
the flavor, the meaning transforms us.