sea dream

i have found at my age i can get into a funk. i call it "a dark place." i have never spent a great deal of time in my "dark place," for it is a place i do not like to go. When there, i also have found it is easiest to get out by writing poetry -- or free verse or whatever it is i write that isn't exactly poetry.

i wrote this last night.

i am no longer in my dark place.

i think,
no, i dream
what was once,
it seems
to me
to be
when I went to sea.

i loved going to sea
because
there were no roads to follow;
there was simply landfall
somewhere
out there
over the horizon;

the choice of heading
to sail
was really
entirely
up to me.

i no longer go to sea
with limitless possibilities
for heading
or dreaming:

i am on roads,
someone else’s roads;
worse,
the roads are narrowing
with fewer forks.

i have finally
come to grips with me
but
find I am no longer
in control
of me
or the roads
i go down.

i must live to expectations
i created:
the narrow road
with decreasing turns.

i wish
or dream
i had a cabin
in a woods somewhere
with a clearing for a garden.
i would hunt and grow
my food.

i would write with a quill
on parchment
by the fire and candlelight
in the evenings.

i would climb
into the feather bed
by the fire
close to where
i sat and wrote.

before i would fall asleep,
i would gaze out the cabin window
at the heavens
with millions of stars, planets, and moons,
visible because
i was in the dark
in the middle of the wood,
far away from the lights of
people population,
civilization, as they smugly call it,
just like it used to be
when i stood evening watches
on the bridge
on the sea
i love
with no roads.


Bonita, California
December 10, 2009