Oh, to ride the WIND with the WILD ones…

but they will never ask me

and I would not really go

for the wilderness they choose

does not wake my gypsy hunger—

I would choose to follow a northern gale

To find a dragon lair.

 

But dragons do not tempt

The WILD ones on the WIND.

They dare to track the bucking bronc

Or bull, or fly the many known terrors;

While I, with my WILD heart,

would rise on the WIND

astride a dragon, fierce and mighty—

Too quick for lasso, too brief for saddle,

Unknown, untamed—too WILD,

even for those who ride the WIND.

 

Still, I will not ever go,

Will not ever challenge the sky

Upon the mysterious and fabled reality,

No, I will merely stand and watch

As the WILD ones on the WIND split the air

With the fever of their leaving.

Here I sit: the lost, the abandoned one

Once again.  So many worlds

I have wandered, strange worlds.

Lured by an author, I entered the lives

Of persons I had never met,

While the author wove the tapestry

Which enfolded me

Into another world, another life.

I rode upon the characters’ laughter

With the buoyancy of a blown bubble

Floating upwards toward the sun.

I became the salt that flavored their tears.

I knew the taste of their mornings.

I knew their faces and their voices.

I knew where and why,

Though it was never mentioned,

An unseen chair lay broken.

So familiar was I with their world,

I heard the whispers

The author left unwritten.

In these places, I lived

For all the hours within the words.

Yet abruptly I am abandoned,

Shut out, cut off:

For every story ends.

 

Unbelieving, almost in shock,

I stare at the scene about me

Seeing what is at once too familiar

Which now I barely recognize.

My eyes search for the vanished images

From a moment before.

The scents surrounding me

Are all wrong,

No longer what they were

Only a moment before.

My ears seek again those unique sounds:

The author’s orchestra of the ordinary

Which was playing across my mind

Only a moment before.

My flesh rebels,

As if it would slough off

The present and the now

As a snake sheds

Its outgrown skin.

 

Here I sit:

Deep within my castle keep

Built of all the outer senses.

I am the lost,

The abandoned one,

Marooned upon reality

Which, for now, is a place

Not of my time

Not of my life.

 

Oh, the burden of being a friend

to the strong

 

They ask only what we can give

knowing it will take

all that we have

 

And they always know

what they ask

so never fail to forgive

when we fail

before the end

 

Oh, the burden of being friend

to the strong

 

To know and not understand

the brilliance

we touch and yet do not

 

To see pity and true sorrow

in their eyes

when they see and know

how little we can do

 

To stand before a magic mirror

seeing ourselves clearly held

bound at the threshold

while beyond our reach

go the strong ones

striding into a world of possibilities

 

Yes, they know what little we can give

when ideals become reality

but they know, too, the greatness

of our most precious gift:

 

We will not refuse the burden,

the burden of loving the strong.

Wind whistles through bone

The flute of the long dead

Music from another time

When lost people danced here

Beside hearths now buried

Beneath the desert sand

 

I imagine I hear their voices

Their songs circling

Within my head

Melting my staid posture

I sway as if blown

By the whistling wind

But in truth, I dance

In this ancient space

Tolerance, even understanding,

can be won on the battleground of mind,

but forgiving does not come so easily.

 

There is always the anger and the pain…

pain at the loss of the treasure:

the once-dream of safety, of love,

a dream secured by innocence.

 

When anger still curls round and round

taunting in whispers:

“You were cheated, cheated”—

the heat electrifies the air,

rumbling like the far away thunder

of a storm that cannot tear itself

into mere wisps of nothing—

 

Forgiving does not come easily.

 

And fear remains unconvinced

by the years removed from harm—

for in a moment,

at an unexpected nuance

of voice or hand,

memory…

banished memory…flinches.

 

No, forgiving does not come easily.