The Situation
Posted on December 15, 2009 with 1 comment
Long empty road, clear night, the river’s a thousand gems dripping moonlight. I’m slipping through the dark. With the road and river come memory; threads of dream-like water rising towards an ephemeral spring or rolling slip shod falling to an ocean. The road and river not listening needless to say - to the chatter, the dramas commuting their course - just side by side, rhythmic, constant and expanding into a galaxy of midnight. Same road, same river, but the steep mountain ravines barely whisper now of the situation. No less enticing the thrill and possibility of folly, but the curtains dividing reality from performance, invested with power like the robes of clergy, look finally now in middle age to be mere pieces of cloth. Yes, I followed him from stage to stage for many decades… but he followed me also. It was an exchange of mysteries.
How keenly overdue my freedom to find love exactly in the hearts center and a welcome within. Half creature, half spirit, on a flight across no-man's land. How sweet to linger in motion here like a star, next to so much water running strong and swift and pure. To crack a window and breathe in the cool out-breath of wilderness, the flood of love to soul, the animal vitality of sense memory rubbing out complexity, what has gone before - in one arresting torrent.
Another night on the road again, driving away with my guitar in the back of the car and a glow in my being for our lives in Vermont, connected sometimes like rusted bridges on crumbling pavement but holding to a sure and trusted pathway. In a swirl of recollection I climb the stairs of chiseled dirt again where I've been tonight and for pleasure retake the steps of scrapped spruce timbers, the slippery snow dusted roots - hole up there like a winter mouse hidden under towering firs, surrounded by snow melt descending off crags - and as the rivulets freeze to ice I reenter the bone dry logs crackling hot in the barrel stove and that god given warmth rising up through old, ornate cast iron vents to the place where we've stolen time together. This is how my life is now and so people make their choices, part and go their own ways. It’s always about looking for the distant shining of open doors - the light of your people, where dinner is cooking, where they know you and want you to come in for eternity.
How keenly overdue my freedom to find love exactly in the hearts center and a welcome within. Half creature, half spirit, on a flight across no-man's land. How sweet to linger in motion here like a star, next to so much water running strong and swift and pure. To crack a window and breathe in the cool out-breath of wilderness, the flood of love to soul, the animal vitality of sense memory rubbing out complexity, what has gone before - in one arresting torrent.
Another night on the road again, driving away with my guitar in the back of the car and a glow in my being for our lives in Vermont, connected sometimes like rusted bridges on crumbling pavement but holding to a sure and trusted pathway. In a swirl of recollection I climb the stairs of chiseled dirt again where I've been tonight and for pleasure retake the steps of scrapped spruce timbers, the slippery snow dusted roots - hole up there like a winter mouse hidden under towering firs, surrounded by snow melt descending off crags - and as the rivulets freeze to ice I reenter the bone dry logs crackling hot in the barrel stove and that god given warmth rising up through old, ornate cast iron vents to the place where we've stolen time together. This is how my life is now and so people make their choices, part and go their own ways. It’s always about looking for the distant shining of open doors - the light of your people, where dinner is cooking, where they know you and want you to come in for eternity.