finding my way home

chilled to the bone

chilled to the bone
night’s deep silence descends
winter drifts through cracks

***

Disconnected from feelings
Numb and disbelieving
I want to write
So many unknowns
So much at stake
So little time left
Will I or Won’t I?
Sooner or Later?
Is Never still an option?

This week brought unwelcome news in a couple of areas. No catastrophic accidents. Just the knowledge of things I didn’t want to hear. About a friend and about my health.

Yesterday we drove through Valley Forge National Historic Park. Outdoor temperatures were subfreezing. Snow was on the ground, covering a thin layer of frozen sleet. We saw one brave soul walking his beautiful dog along one of the paths that circle and cut through Valley Forge. Everyone else was in heated four-wheel vehicles driving through the Park.

I didn’t write the haiku above after that drive. But it captures some of the angst and foreboding perhaps encoded in the few remaining buildings and cabins still standing here and there throughout the Park. Remnants of a winter nightmare followed by springtime diseases that took more lives than winter took.

They thought they would be going home to their families and friends.

foot paths meander
through fields of wartime sorrow —
home to the fallen

I want to find my way home. Don’t you? Life is filled with breathtaking beauty. The kind that makes leaving it breathtakingly painful. Right now I’m being invited to play life in a different key. And my cold fingers are stumbling around a bit, learning to be at home in what doesn’t always feel like home.

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August 8, 2017

Through hazy unknowns
life tumbles, turns
I wake far from home
not knowing how or who
I’m to be

I search for long-gone milestones
landmarks north stars
The sky an empty void
of echoing questions
no answers
no explanations
no solace

I wander between knowing what I
think I know and fearing this
could be true
Truth so fragile
so easily pierced by life’s urgent
need for me to be
someone I am not

Life itself a great puzzlement of
interlocking pieces
leading somewhere
or nowhere
I’m never quite sure
A little light
a little meaning
a little distance
from the void of not knowing

Will this come round right?
Every book every scrap of history
every letter every pain
every sorrow every shame
every secret
wells up in me
competing for attention
Pick me!
I hold the key to golden answers
Can you help me find my way home?

I first published this poem on 30 July 2015. Today, two years later, it still rings true. Perhaps more so, given the last USA presidential election and all that happened before and since then.

I could smile and say God will work it all out, but that feels like abdication. A denial of my shared responsibility as a human being and as a citizen.

All promises to the contrary, my world was never safe or secure. Today I know that what passed back then for ‘safe and secure’ was, in fact, a mirage. Sometimes deliberate; sometimes the product of years of denial. Or false hope that saying something often enough would make it real.

Fake news is fake news. Fake history is fake history. Fake solutions are tomorrow’s problems passed on to the next generation.

Today we’re reaping a whirlwind that’s been in the making for centuries. No magic key will solve all our dilemmas. Still, I’m going to keep picking at the lock—one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one day at a time.