Fork in the Road

Feels like I've been awake for all of it.  One day you're three, swaying about the beginners ballet floor, or popping around the corner off the sidewalk into the driveway on your green machine big-wheel, and the next you're...I don't know, hurting with experience and wisdom.

I'm in this meadow.  I remember arriving but I don't remember the fork in the road.  There must've been one, For some of those that I remember aren't here.

I sometimes can't remember if I travelled in the interstate or the back gravel, or which way was most unique to me.  I think people laughed a bit, warmed by fire and wine.  But then why does skin yellow and flowers die?  Eventually what's left is a pot and a coffin.

I don't remember the fork in the road.  I walked through the forest, and even hiked a few.  I wonder if the cliff-sides turned me away or was it the fear?  When difficult choices slithered into my sphere of influence, I feel as if I opted for different modes of transportation.  One only recognizes the path against the sky where there seems to be none were it not for life up there tracking one through the sky.

Do we lack imagination?  Emotional philanthropy means a willingness to emote by either rote, note, vote, or remote.  But the mechanical, the anecdotal, the confidence, and the distant good intentions will taunt me and you.  only that the life between tutus and tardives proved that I trusted something, and that others are here.

Once I reached the place called "roots" I turned.  I had not wondered what I missed until then.  I'd eaten the golden fruit, and remembered the taste but little else.  God had given me secrets I dared never to share, for fear of tears spilt onto rocky soil.  So I buried them, and could fairly say, hid them surreptitiously.  It seems I even left my memory there.

Until someone shook my hand and thanked me. The job wasn't difficult, but I was there.  And then another, and another.  I turned toward a path I thought had been a hike into the uncharted and unnoticed.  I looked at cartographer's record and compared them with the man I'd helped.  His map was similar to mine, to my chagrin.  Oh, there were differences, and there were territories I had discovered.  Turns out I showed others my own territory, and even allowed them to till my land.  There had been moments of terror, and others of joy.

I remembered.  I remembered more of the path.  I remembered animals, and flowers, and stuff that was unnameable, and became nothing more than lollygags and dooperbugs.

I named my own star.  But I still don't remember the fork in the road.  I just remember how many footprints I saw on my path tread.  I remembered more.  Forbidden fruit made me sick.  Made me look at myself without the forest and the road.  I thought I was the capacitor for my own light.  I shook someone's hand, and thanked them.  I thought about that.  Maybe I had chosen something, but my path seemed a series of planned accidentals.

Ah, faith.  Accidents are really no more than a stubbed toe that probably led to something significant.  Anything seemingly worse arose as no accident at all, but periods of growth and anger.

I named a star, I think I told you that once before.  I remember the name, "Narciss" I called it, because it always forced me to look at myself.  I can't remember where the star is anymore, I've moved on.  An arrogant star with a name shines somewhere, just as it always has.

Maybe looking up, into the infinite was a way to avoid the fork in the road.  I learned that the infinite includes up and out.  Prayer works I suppose, and sometimes wishes on my star wojuld come true.

Prayer is a fork in the road.  It proves that God is still faithful either way.  Prayer keeps us looking out and up.  Is the capacitor and the light. I know that now.

I looked for the golden fruit, and realized it was gone.  My bag was empty.  How could this be? What's mine is mine!  But another shook my hand, and I happened to notice his bag was empty.  I failed to understand then what I know now.  I worried about the fruit because it sustained my own pursuits.  But the reason we were all so happy upon that meadow at the end of the path was the realization that they, we could not have foreseen this meadow, and therefore could not have foreseen any of it.

I realized my name.  Narciss.  I had become a fire that had been consumed within itself, and threatened its life.  But I could not have foreseen the path and a I smiled.  I wondered how we all had come to this meadow, with laughing daffodils, and whispering grass.  My muscles were taut and painful.  Man, I'm tired.  Man I'm tired.  It's been a hell of a thing.  I just want to sit down.

Problem is I believed my story mattered to me and those I could persuade to see me.

I felt a hug, and a rub.  Someone behind me, I tried to turn, but was prevented.  I simply enjoyed this holy massage.  I smiled again.  There were forks in the road, but I was never alone.

I wished upon another star.  "Grace."  The star shone bright, but it's illumination turned out to be her.  My star was again not of my own devices, but an adoption gift.  She stepped outside the tendrils of a star and took my hand.

Faith and meadows, a marriage of love and salvation.  She took my hand, and as always the meadow winds changed and a new path emerged.

We now tread, sometimes carefully.  But suddenly there is a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.  I can look around and stretch my hand to the wonder along the path.  My skin has softened, joined by grace, and my eyes are opened, brushed by the holy.  Her hair is now my constant meadow, her hands my security, and our our faith is our hope, and is His confidence and his promise.

I now look to the stars, the hills, and the path.  I can hear my feet scratch the dirt worn by a new path.  Our breath.  Our breath.  Others are there too.  A calling perhaps.

Until a new meadow, I have my grace.

Midwest

Midwest a poem by richard j. elgersma 

Have you seen the plains of the midwest? I have. I have. Rolls of hay match the natural sway of the land full of wheat, barley and corn touched golden by the midwest sun, a different kind of sun than anywhere in the world if you ask me. Because my sun drips honey dew across the grasses and every living thing. A full warm, familiar, and comforting honeypot tips over the horizon; Sweet abundance garnished with strawberry red and clementines. 

I lived where the streets, full of bicycles and kids and safe laughter somewhere outside the worry of their parents who seem mostly satisfied that they're ok. 

I live in pain and dusted memories, sometimes fresh and afoul, and sometimes drowned in the pheasants cry, and the geese clamoring above in their original peloton. 

God eyes and angels visit this place, all unawares until you've pressed this land for all she's got, leaned into her aggressive hills, wrestled with the hearts of her hard-working souls. And like the honeybee sunk in colorcaves and pollen rest, you lie pillowed on your back in prairies, counting sheep and inventing worlds in clouds.