Journey Alongside a Minor Highway
People get swallowed
by sights and sounds,
unknowingly digested
by the world.
There are ways to escape,
to go higher, to be more
than indoctrinated particles,
to make the world
pronounce you with its lungs.
Your faith is wounded,
and you mistake the wound
for strength.
In a field of unbroken stems,
people scramble
to collect the falling facts;
with shoes plodding
over petals
and a trumpet-shaped corona,
and a smokestack voicing
the corrupted scream.
Tempting as it is,
to vanish like a prayer,
I remain here, for now,
in this Rust Belt town.
I am trudging beside
murky water,
spat up by a pipe
connected to waste
and ancient design;
it is now
a breeding ground
for blood-suckers.
A stranger lurks nearby,
I sense him behind me.
There is something
vaguely menacing about a whistle,
to even imagine
a grown man, walking along,
whistling out a tune,
I anticipate threat:
the joyous act
culturally undermined
by some cinematic sense
of foreboding.
But this stranger,
he keeps quiet
like the beautiful perennials.
Entering the neighborhood,
I likewise react
to the abrupt sound
of a sprinkler
like it’s a hissing snake.
The mind was always wild,
it was never anything else.
The mind isn’t pure order,
apart from nature;
the mind is part
of nature,
suspended in its own
murky water.
By the chance of gain,
or curious state of aggression,
we break boulders,
smashing pebbles
out of mass.
Mostly, we circumvent
obstacles or follow
beaten paths, abiding by
a map to find
that elusive destination
of true meaning:
some perpetual place
where no one lives for long.
It is strange also,
the way we feel a pull
toward other people, but this
way of thinking we sanitize
for our own health.
It is too mysterious
to wonder why
within mere seconds
of seeing a certain face,
the soul says,
“I am supposed to know you.”
And when a person
defies this,
there is always
some unrest.
And we are forced
to wander.
