"The Author-Preneur with Something To Say That You'll Love To Read." #authorpreneurTJM

Slowly Sinking Ridges – Written at the Prison

The slowly sinking ridges of
the far-off mountain gap
drawl me all along their edges
to the fields of random
bushes, brush, and trees
below.
To the creek,
to the creek at the bottom
at the bottom
of the purpling clumps of brambles.

There is a cunning that
comes from being able
to survive out there –
out there against all
of the odds of the
things my insides would
have me to do.
A cunning that knows
just what wood I should
gather for my fire;
just what branches I need
to start it;
so I may
ease into the
gentle wholeness it calls
out of me.  The wholeness
of men, and trails, and woods,
and all of the odds it takes to
survive. The wholeness
of things my crimes would
not be able to call forth
out of my depths.

How to burn despair
into the ash of hope;
how to weave anger
into learning to stay
alive; how to turn a whim
into patience and no act
that would harm my chance
at being free.

There is a cunning in
tending to the deeper
pieces of my me; one
that sets me to thrive
and not just simply
to survive with that
impulse to have.

And so,
I climb atop the
hill that possesses me,
to the mountaintop that
gives me view of
all that is spread so
gently all around.
And, from this vantage point
I ask myself, “Do I have
what I need within my
soul?  What I need
to make my way through

all I see out there?”

photo by author

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