Reaching Out From the Chest

           Everything in my chest

reaches out to bathe itself

in the chestnut colored loam;

strewn all about

with burnt and blackened

pieces of bark and wood,

mingled with earth and

needles as if from

the basement of my days.

It reaches toward the

warmth of the forest floor that has

been asleep for the winter

of my adult life.

It is drawn out by

the new heat of an age old woods;

by the heat of everyman’s

journey through these days

of finding a voice – finding

a central home in the self.

I find myself relaxed in my own

aging. Coming to myself like

a warming bed of needles on

the dirt of thousands upon thousands

of aeons, and winters, flowering blooms

of gentle-life growth.

Cones pepper the view and

thick blankets of retreating snow

withdraw their reach to the bottom

of the hills; uncovering all that has

fallen and died since autumn; all

that is in there – that

I have forgotten until now..

My days have pulled in

a bit lately, retreating back

to the bottom of meaning.

I find pieces of myself

scattered on the floor of my

life, and see wonder in the

ripening of passages and turns.

The compost of my days is rich

with dank dark expression, holding

itself against the leaner times. I have

found more life then I knew I had held.

The darkness holds no absence

it only hides the view. Flowers and

blooms for of future glory

lay dormant in the tubers

and roots of all life’s meaning

of imagination and place; of

time and space.

Countless feet of melting snow open

my heart to a call for warmth. Standing

on the remnants of all that is past,

tenderness rises like the scent of fresh dirt. 

Tilled and open, it awaits the planting of

the second half of life.

A raven sings this same song

from the other side of this vista.

I can hear it, but he escapes my view.

Ciao!

tjm+