If the essence of travel
is like a bottle
on the floor of a moving bus,
it can encapsulate
a momentum in the surrendering,
how every curve in the road
repositions its
temporary home.
With the imagination as a source
and destinations unknown,
there’s a pause over a glassy surface
like the reflection of pines
from a chair on an empty pier.
See them penitent in this light,
pressed against the sky
and in crystalized moments
the breaks in the clouds
fall back into place
on glacial lakes.
There are simple rituals of control
in a fractured life,
the boiling kettle
that begets tea
in a green leafed kitchen,
Tai Chi that steeps the internal
in a laundry beneath
the backdrop of mountains.
There is something sublime in
running of hands
over ridgelines and the curves
that follow the currents
of continuous movement.
Like the trains
who by track and tunnel
deconstruct images
that huddle beneath passion, variety.
Through these windows
the inevitable takes shape
and life gives it strength
by the knowledge of the end of the line.
A momentum in the surrendering,
the landscape’s haphazard design.
From a veil of dark,
from whatever meaning
can be divined
from memory’s spark
in a field of fog,
the commingling of shades,
journals and coffee stains,
the night blending into day.
Along these borders,
dreams and swollen rivers
a life blood is
sourced from a common ancestor,
the past is only passing through.
Adapting but never arriving,
embracing but never evading
the ever-present chaos
sewn into the stitches
of a fabric unraveling.
This rite of passage,
the unfinished fragments
of letters and old poems
from a life mostly forgotten,
is shown to have its own momentum
not in the surrendering
but in seizing the moment.
yakskinpocketnotes 