Travelers

You were never
my North Star

but a fellow traveler
a cheerful companion

who held my hand
on a rocky path

who sang me songs
to pass the time

and kissed my cheeks
so sweetly

that I almost forgot
that your destination

was never the same
as my own

A step in the right direction?

I am too young
to know that this
land is ancient
maybe even sacred
and that my footsteps
stir my ancestor's souls

beneath me

I am too blind
to see that this
river has wound its
way through the lives
of my mother's mother's mothers,
women and children
who lived off this land
and built this world

beneath me

I am too wise
not to understand that these
footsteps I'm making
are miles from
my ancestors' paths
and this land will crumble

beneath me


--

July PAD Day 2 - discovery / bop form

Longitude

I'm not sure
where I am
on the map

as if life
could ever be
navigated that way

the only latitude
I need is
to be freed

from my own
expectations of where
I ought to

be by now


--

April PAD Day 23 - location

Treading water

I carried you
held your head above water
when you were
drowning in misery

I drowned with you
unable to float us both
when the burden
you carried sunk
us both


--

April PAD Day 2 - voyage

The Way

Just finished watching "The Way," so this prompt couldn't have had better timing.

Sometimes we walk
down paths chosen for us
by well-meaning folks

Sometimes we choose
the well-worn paths for ourselves

Sometimes we chance
down paths with well-meaning folks
who choose to share their journey

while searching for a path
of their own

Sacred warriors

Inspired, perhaps, by Earth Day and watching "Howl" last night.


We left the compass
at home, forgotten in some
drawer full of coupons
and crumbs and fortune cookies.
We knew where we were going.

We felt our way through
the flat night, navigating
by murky moonlight
a spiderweb of street lights
that led to something beyond

city water pipes
and cookie cutter housing
divisions and fast
food drive-thrus. We followed the
elemental pull of some

primal lust buried
deep in our mother's mother's
bones, a knowing that
this land was the breast milk of
thousands who had walked and died

crossing great plains and
mountains, sacred warriors
led by ancestors
who traveled beside them and
honored their transcendent quest.




Poetic Bloomings #52:  from every ending comes a beginning

Clear direction

We climbed the mountain
for the journey to the top.
We sailed the ocean
to feel the wind and salt air.
We left the compass at home.



WD Poetic Form Challenge: Tanka

Hell on wheels

An tribute to the mad men of Kerouac's "On the Road," men who rubbed their bellies and talked about life and laughed so loudly that people must've thought they'd gone mad.


HELL ON WHEELS
Sometimes it calls, that slow
burn of madness,
a spring fever that sweeps

like a brush fire through
your senses and
drives you toward the road

to an adventure that leads
wherever we feel
at that very moment, to

the places we're meant to
be, and to
the us we're always becoming.