In the stark brightness of winter,
in the dawn, in the cold
breathless run across the horizon, running,
reaching for some salvation that
sometimes hinted it would acquiesce, that
seemed to have been our own, but
lifts itself from us, disowns us suddenly,
leaves us in struggle with our lives:
we know not to where we run,
we know not from what we run, we know not
the beginning nor end, constantly
in medias res: and that is how it will end,
one day cut in the middle of a word
we never knew what it meant, that it
meant at all. (Gentle is the world,
a secret voice whispers, the corners that
you have never explored have been
waiting ever for you, remember this.) And
was it ever real, was it ever
true, that we were saved, once, that
we had known the prize, that sweetness
of safety? I deny you, my past, I
deny you, that which ever I was: it was
never mine that I thought was mine,
it was never what I believed to be so.
(But yet, in the quiet lie still
many treasures you will discover, lie still
notions that will fill your heart
in such a glow that cannot be forgotten.)
I am not of this world, I have never
belonged, I am a stranger placed here
by some power I never understood,
I am a traveler with no home,
I am covered in a flesh that is has never
been my true body. (Did you never
know this? That has always been your
salvation, o wanderer, and it
will be yours to understand, to perceive.
Sit still, and you can hear the
thousand reasons why for this one
moment.) I say no more, now, for
I hear the footsteps in the snow, on, on,
my running, and outside that sound,
this minute, there is nothing else.
