Ok, I’m guessing this will be quick – fatigue is at my forefront. A weak excuse. Part of me is writing to check off one more thing on my to do list. In other part I owe you my undivided attention. My usual is a steady stride right past you, over to the balcony doors, which I open to allow for fresh air. Now I want to stop and look at you closely. A sort of acknowledgment, like bowing my head to say with sealed lips: „I see you“. The seeing is mutual. I admire your still progression through the seasons, and the unique timing that spreads through you, outwardly subtle, but on the inside, ah, a flow of life in growing evidence. By the time I recognize your awakening, you taunt my lack of attention by portraying growth even to the ignorant. Day by day your bud advances, grows restless, speaks of turning the insides towards the sun. I posses no true knowledge of your coming of seed and soil. It’s a gated miracle and I barely stop. And when I do, I perceive your sudden appearance and neglect the path that has made you visible even to me. I regret, at times, my confusion over what is of importance, and search the distance, when you are so near, right here in my living room.

Welcome dear friend. I thank your gentle presence , which asks nothing, forces nothing, and yet, wholly expresses life. Your design is restrained by my incapacity to capture in written word. A shortcoming I let dribble out of my consciousness to meet you instead in your illumination of purity. Touching petal to skin, I dissolve in tender peacefulness. Never did I know flower is here the way I am here, simply more quiet, equally fading in time. I fondly relate our being.

The nomad I have become or the nomad I always was and the nomad stewing within. Or the nomad I think I am or others think I am. The question: does it matter? Nomad challenges home, if home is a physical place, not if home is closer than any place. What if coming home requires no movement? In fact, quite the contrary. Then I may well be nomad and never have left home. Yes, in thought. In this realm I have left everything, returned, burned, created and recreated hell and heaven. I seldom mature in thought.

I doubt home is knowledge acquired. I want to say, it is seeing what was always here. I may nomad the world and never find home if I look outside, that is clear. My gaze in turn to inhale the outer world is to channel all present. Present here, present now, present gift. And I the recipient.

Now I must go. Not to a some where or a some one. Perhaps not even.  Only a single teardrop forming at the rim of my lid. A provisional taste of salt; saturated emotion, light rap in my heaving chest. You guard, shouldering the incessant flow of thought, let me go. Release me. Spill me – drop – into open sea, so I may be free. Some flesh is retained by your grip

, thus I step out of flesh, and cradle heart in loyal devotion, setting it down beside flesh on cold stone. I break with shell and find nestled tight acquired ideas and concepts of who I am. Pieces plucked from a blooming meadow in early spring, pieces on a board taking a bow, now stepping off stage – fall. And with it light and wind and sound as I too step, three step into darkness. And walk on. No glimpse of time behind or ahead – no time. Just space untouched and bare, no carry or call or ink dipped tiny feet on blank paper, no name or number, no I. Just. A return to home. The revered eternal.

Home, my peculiar log on log, young and old fable, how many times have you roused and stirred, stretched and strained into your ephemeral sigh? Oft your visit stirs me too. The timber wood tickles my touch, my yearn, my finger pacing your rugged skin, stopping at your exposed collar to map your hurt, where branches slipped at the cut of the saw. Your home razed to build mine.

Tree and then timber, like pig and then pork. I utter shame in desparate recognition of our deficiency. Our survival depends on shelter. I am obliged to recite gratitude. And will love to match your loss as I house in your walls, evermore a guest in debt.

Half-smile loosens my knot. The stream carries water in its own purpose. I tilt my heart to nod to stream and tree , and in a moment recognize the great surge that houses all.

One hand in the air, I’m waving. In the air – I’m breathing. Still breathing. Not all candles sway in the wind. Not all wicks stand tall, embedded in wax. I stand, somewhat. Still waving. I don’t want to be seen. I want you to see, to wake up and see. This full blossom of my wired fingers resembles each blade of grass in frail existence, reaching up high, not tall, not good, just.

An oath taken in deep soil, where roots light up, dig down far, too to breath.  Some kind of breath joins us. I make no mistake in naming it.  I cannot. Left and right is a slight swing pouring into me. Now fasten me to your own selfless root and breath through me, pass life to the forefront that I may lift my head as I too fall into the rhythmic sway.  This is my rest. Like  me

, I am grass, love me, I am you. When will you wake up and see?

The odds are shaken like the leaves in forceful winds. The odds of having been born where I was born. It had me thinking, did I triumph? Or is lucky more than a name? Winning and luck interest me as little as the leaves taken by the wind, drawn upwards into the open skies to confuse the clouds. Down here, well, things are different. Borders mark the beginning and the end of some form of being. Countries for example. They don’t interest me much either. Countries – is the concept supposed to help us survive a little longer? Protect that which is „ours“? That which we presume to be us? A strange thing, really. There isn’t much to durably interest me. Except maybe the absence of noise. Would that be the equivalent of silence? And what if there is neither noise nor silence? Then we’re probably dead.

It’s ok, says duck, and death embraces duck lovingly. I still watch the leaves, picked up by wind, fiddling with the clouds. I have never seen a cloud in the shape of a leaf, and can’t help but wonder, after all, what could be more important than leaves and clouds in delightful dance? Perhaps there is an interest I can dwell in softly.

Why did we come to this place? Ill equipped, no less refined – yearning hastens my question forward.

I have never looked at green more deeply. Intention runs in my veins. I might as well ask

, why do they keep on expanding, when they could have died instead? But here they are. Here we are.

Chance and green, both rest in my heart. No cell of me truly understands. The up-rise is purely driven by what I identify as emotion – it’s vague in word, substantial in form.

Expectantly I stand on tiny legs and cheer on my mother. Again and again and again. I am only and entirely here. Then I sink to my knees and slouch my head. Somewhere on the lake’s surface my ball grows distant.  At least I’m not alone.

Something is off, and it’s not the four letter word inscribed on a carrot, that soft flesh someone calls home. I shouldn’t be here. Not today. I sense I lost touch to parsnip, baby bear and great white.  Lost is a four letter word too, and it stands straight, well, leaning somewhat against the forefront, where the world draws slow circles and I abandoned its grace. I must return. Not by dancing comically or swaying cautiously, but by my questioning. Ruthless questioning, because I have learned to hide the truth from my own eyes, my own heart. Too scared to look and to face the totality of illusion. I came to crave it, not like it, need it, not live it in authenticity. I am guessing all – all that holds every pumpkin and the singing nightingale never removed me from completion. I removed myself, sought, felt, pounding heart, brief glitter, see not see, growing faint. And now I’m looking someplace else, latch on to distraction like the hungry calf to its mothers udder, addicted. A practitioner or prisoner, someone…someone needs to remember where he came from and where he is going.

Stop. Freedom is, and I am. Something is off, and I – who am I? Coming to think of it, I can’t remove myself from it. It is inside of me, or I am it, and warm, and flesh, and alive, throwing light and space across another dimension that reaches beyond the caverns of the heart and can be restrained by none. What four letter word cannot be contained and floats with selfless ease through all of us?