Saturday, August 6, 2011

Endless Search


I come into your world.
I bring what I know.
The open door leads to a warm hearth and narrow bed.
I see in you the life I never had.
The hot cup of coffee for breakfast.
The sweet smell behind the ears, mended laundry.
Your face is missing in the red rocks of still giants.
The range and nights of smoky fires by a river.
You cannot be here, just as I could never be there.

I can not join your world.
I am gone.
I’ve stayed away too long,
I let the wind tear apart my cheeks,
let the moon see my secrets.
The open night sky has sewn itself into me,
making me its own,
making me a man of the wild,
unfit for the walls of your house,
the sweet soapy smell of your skin.

I have stayed away too long, but maybe I was never there.
A stranger, a wild child itching to break free of mother’s arms.
A lone drifter.

I wander.
I look for home, for rest, for the end;
but they are not in houses, in open arms.
They are not in anything I seek,
but still I look.
Behind the mountain, across the stream,
under rocks, in the houses of other men.
I can hear voices, a howling wind, screams of women I loved but never knew.
I wander, searching.

I am the ghost without eyes.
The spirit who grabs onto any change of season, yet finds no rest.
There is no home, but my quest remains.
The endless search for those things I believe are real.

There is no home.
No destination, no goal.
I am a drifter. Searching.
Sometimes finding that glowing piece of light,
but it melts as the day turns into a black canvas,
and then I feel it again,
the shrill high call of the wind.
The shadows, the swirling stories of open fires and sunrise over the mesa.
I cannot be of another world,
I am a searcher.

The scene is dark, the home is not mine.
I am of the wind and its journey entwines with mine.
I am of the sun, moving always.
Shadows are all I know.

I search because I know nothing else.
Could it be any other way?
A home and kin and rocking chair by the fire?
A woman smelling of sunshine?
A child with my eyes?

I wander because I know no other way.
I am of the light,
of the places without walls,
of the fire without end.
The search with no conclusion
the seeking without end.

I am the searcher.
I cannot be found.
I cannot find.
I can never rest.