True Places

                     
                     
I know you want me to tell you a lost story of                        
how the damp cavern won't sacrifice your treasure                        
down the topaz throat of some demi-god aching                        
hot for worship before you make it back home.                      
                       
You want me to tell you the story of how strung                        
pearls became snow caps of young, southern                        
mountains rising from the Wolf Spirit as a vision                        
in the Leo moon's medicine wheel this evening.                        
                       
I know you, trembling upon knees, gasping for                        
breath amid wild moldavite sage warped in many                        
weathered seasons of trek. You, whose very image                        
is carved upon the mountain's face beside me.                          
                       
So blind to searching you didn't see but still believed                        
in something greater beckoning you weave the steep                        
path toward it, erasing the illusion of isolation you                        
guarded faithfully throughout growing years of doubt.                        
                       
The fevered night of swallowing whole the space                        
before cursing your weakness to abandon the ascent;                        
take leave of the trail imprinted with the double-helix                        
of your DNA pulsing upward within its crusted veins.                        
                       
Distance is a lie that shouldn't be any harder to erase                        
than parting the lips to kiss. Yet, it's time and duty,                        
responsibility that we, as spiritual blood and bone, are                        
trained to honor until bound by unbreakable knots.                        
                       
Bonds of compassionate dishonesty; a commitment                        
prisoner separated from the gold stone shore of the                        
earthen blue ruby flame.  Long nights of repaying debt            
to Now; thinking onyx waters of constellations instead.                        
                       
Waters so deep and constant between two hemispheres                        
that borders became graphite preventing the planting of                        
yourself, causing the garnet fingers of god to stretch                        
across the horizon as if to grab you from leaving again.                        
                       
I know you. Captive. You who dreamt of jumping                        
the plane into sapphire waves slapping your face,                        
breaking the barrier of distance that stunned you                        
the first time your darkness swallowed its light.                        
                       
Light that shattered your life into a new world                        
of backwards bravery worth surviving for. Sometimes                        
running is the only fight. Wonderlust; it haunts you;                        
calls to you from the inside of your rediscovered home.                        
                       
You want me to tell you the consecrated story of our                      
own people, strays of the lost tribe leaving their taste                        
across your seasoned mouth; inseminated in the locked                        
closet of your tomorrow. I know you, twin voyeur.                        
                       
Gypsy paramour; you want me to unbind the                        
sacred scroll and recant it measure by measure.                        
But I won't. I Can't. Never. Because only you                        
can unearth the tunnel to your own buried treasure.                          
               
Only you can retrace your ancestry to the future;                       
It is not down in any map; true places never are.                        
~ Herman Melville                        
                       
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