The Travelling Tree

There is darkness

and there is light,

and I am here in the shadows

of this place,

in this time,

I find myself.

I am whole

and I am broken.

I am saved

and I am lost.

Together and apart

from all things I have been.

I am somewhere in between

what I was

and what I will be,

were I was

and where I’m going

and the unknown

so excites me.

 

So close to defeat,

I keep on fighting,

not sure that I know any other way.

Struck by the vulnerable beauty

that exists,

however temporarily.

It always goes,

it’s always there,

it’s always coming on;

the war,

the storm,

there’s something in the air.

 

I can’t seem to escape,

not sure I want to, anyway.

I’ve given all I’ve got

and always seem to find a place

where possibility exists,

where fantasy becomes so real.

Lost in what I feel,

what I know.

 

I’m driving home

on an anonymous road,

my hand is light upon the wheel.

I can feel

there’s something more

over the next rise.

My eyes running with tears

that dry,

when the wind blows by

and scares up all my fears.

 

I am nothing,

if I’m not hunting,

if I’m not running,

I am coming home.

Finding where I belong

in a place I’ve never known.

The thunder shakes this place,

it makes the changes known.

Blows away the fade

and what is left

is what will grow.

No one wants to face the days alone.

I have people with me who have shown,

they are worth the journey I am on.

Before me lies the way to where I’m from,

I must continue on.

 

There is a tree,

growing from  the ruins

of my birthplace.

Its bark is rough,

its limbs

twisted and bent,

yet it blossoms beautifully

when fed

from steel grey skies’

hard, striking rain

and gale.

Resplendent in its field of toppled stones,

roots entwined within foundations

laid by blistered hands

that created the only thing in this world

capable of withstanding the past

and containing the future;

rich, cultured dirt.

No matter where I am going,

or where I am from,

I was quickened by that dirt.

With the worms and shit,

I became life

and death

and forever.

I never knew loss,

only rebirth.

 

I never grew apart,

I only spread my arms

around the sky

and laid roots

with each eager footstep.

I have known no joy,

but that of branches cut

and taken,

to be grown in foreign soils,

some much harder than my own.

I am alight in darkness,

deep, ebony night.

Aspirating death

and kissing long the life giver.

I am deeply rooted,

but my seeds have travelled far

on winds only known

to sentinels.

 

I am the wandering one.

I am the unyielding heart.

I am the wind,

the road,

the sea

and the rocks beneath me.

I am breath,

released with that first step

across the threshold

of protected places

found only by hearts seeking.

Driving through the night

for love only.

 

HG – 2016

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