Two paths there were, in a yellowing swampy type of wood, with no-hunting signs plastered 

all around

One was the heart path

Which knows ancient wisdom

and can forgive

    drastic violent silent sudden vanishings

 

The other was the thought path

which plots & plans & twists

    to come up with many, many, many possible scenarios

 

In which the scene where you are leaving me

Isn’t really, in fact, you leaving me at all

An old love, so big / that you had to

b/c of some circumstance so unfair / you behaving so nobly

that they will write period dramas about your sacrifice for me, for love!

And when you finally come back you will be so proud /sure /pleased /smug

 

That i waited patiently like a fairy princess up in a tower of certainty

    who could fly away -- she has wings after all -- but does not!

    Because all good fairy girls wait patiently for the princes’ song who will release them

 

Oh fuck that noise no, no they don’t, they most certainly do not, this one doesn’t

Light her up? Man, should you try it, but you don’t. You run. She finds someone she loves.

Sure, but then he runs.

And i’m not staying up in this damn tower anyway i got things to do

 

So I take both paths. Every day. I walk them both. Sometimes when I look down, the leaves take on a certain cast in the very bright I-am-almost-going-down-but-not-quite-yet sunshine which cuts diagonally right into the cornea and so things look luminescence, silvery-sheenly, bright

Unearthly

 

and i think of you.

As if i wasn’t thinking of you before that thought and again right after it?

As if you don’t take up all of my time. Storm or sunny or windy or cold or too hot; i’m wondering.

It’s gonna take a lot of album covers and notes and fan pages for me to quench this curiosity but i got years and years and a nice comfortable covered bridge in a photograph

near a bar where only the cool dance so it’s safe for us, we dance, we’re good dancers and we fit well,

oh they love us there, remember?

Especially your hat

 

On the thought path,

I finally can hear that last song, the one that woke me in the witching hours

I didn’t know my feet would be cut balancing that blade but i have always been afraid of blades

not too afraid of very much anymore but yes that

 

I didn’t want to be shielded or sheltered either but if i had thought of the right word it might have gone differently

I am not sorry i awoke, but i am sorry i didn’t remember we stand together; we must

My wise broken empty heart is very very busy ordering a full retreat

Blow up the barracks, leave no clue unexploded, deny the treason, bust out, get out of there NOW

 

So I walk both paths.

It’s quiet here where there was so much joyous laughter and music a short while back, there was dancing in the street, I saw hats in the air, but as I turned the corner…

 

It had all ended and the band was packing up

Luckily the old souls agreed to play one more for me although i still wore a hat

there was no sunrise juxtaposing the darkened audience pit

 

Quiet is nice, true, except when i write poetry, which takes too too much time i have a jumble of now, now that the library burned down

I walk, shiny up my yoga mat, dream on dotted lines, 

            I’m good again now

                Storm’s heading back out to sea

                        Starting to suspect it would never cease

I’m wrong

Again

I often am

But at least i know how to say it

 

Only yesterday morning

when i put on my socks

I was giving it my all, 100% mindful attention, as i try to do to spiral up from the pain of 

 

(-how very much i miss you every second of every day and how i ache that i might have to miss you forever-)

 

Life

The pain of life, living, existing, daily drudge

When i looked down

and on one socked foot and ½ way towards the other, is a nutcracker. One for each sock.

I looked at the sky and laughed so hard, so long, so loud, all by myself here in horse country, so only the deer looked up, i laughed till tears streamed down my face and i was absolutely delighted that there exists nutcrackers on sox that i only vaguely remember from the other drawer, now almost on my feet,

and then i cried.

 

For who else would think that mildly amusing?

Only one, whose ear i do not whisper in.

 

So you see,

It really doesn’t fucking matter which road i walk. Or which path i take. Or how i choose to understand this.

It doesn’t matter what i choose.

There is only what is real, true truth and I am not privy to that knowledge. The door was shut.

As I asked oh please don’t shut this door please don’t, not when i’m …

 

That is the only fact that should matter on any damn path.

Keep walking

Walking’s good

I know not what night is. I walk in the sun.

 

You got me smiling, yes.

But laughing, laughing I do all by myself. I liked laughing with you. 

Seemed there was music in it, then.

 

Whom is led astray when? Which path might they walk?