And there were those of us
who then listened and heard
the savannas of ages
humming their time and time again chant.
That same earth-old chant
that rests in our throats
and sings us
to ever and ever, amen.
There were those of us
who awoke one day
to find ourselves
on a mountain pass walking.
There were those of us
whose breath caught in our chests
as the ground crumbled
from footprints we made.
And there were those of us
who heard roaring
of boulders and twigs and leaves
in the valleys
and gorges below us
fallen from places
where we had tread.
There were those of us
who didn’t stop walking.
There were those of us
who wanted to know how we got there
who had many questions.
Why must this happen?
Why can’t life just be fair?
There were those of us
who picked up one foot
and then placed it down again
and then soldiered on,
and then cowboyed up
with a stiff upper lip.
There were those of us
who trudged.
There were those of us
who went on still
and after a while
let our questions and grumbles
float from the place
in front of our mouths
and sway to the ground
like falling oak leaves
to rest on the path.
There were those of us
who let go the huge questions
to go mostly unanswered
as they collapsed into dust.
There were those of us
who looked behind us
to find that the road
had been turned into rubble.
There were those of us
who kept walking through
though cussing and mumbling
but none-the-less walking
without missing a beat.
There were those of us
who looked to the left of us
for the mountain top
to see only its brambleberries
hanging from its ridges
holding its secrets
away from our sight.
There were those of us
who looked to the right of us
and saw in the distance
to where the sky meets horizons.
And there were those of us
who looked there and saw
a million lands
of stoic and golden
sunlit grasses
creviced by rivers
on their million year journeys
to oceans.
And there were those of us
who then listened and heard
the savannas of ages
humming their time and time again chant.
That same earth-old chant
that rests in our throats
and sings us
to ever and ever, amen.
There were those of us who wandered
to the edge of the precipice
and reckoned the place
where all the lands started
was the same place
at the foot of the mountain
where we planned out our journey
when we knew what our plan was;
to go up the mountain
and look and see
what we might see
that we could not see
from the place that was
where we stood back then.
There were those of us who saw
that the places where our feet
had been meeting the earth
was rough-hewn
and tortured with roots.
There were those of us
who saw the road change
as that piece of time passed
that occurs as we touch
our foot to the earth.
We saw as the mountain pass
changed to a path
made of bricks
made of gold like the road
in the fable in the book
that we read years ago
as young children
who believed that our lives
were like worlds that were things
that we endlessly, earnestly, mightily
conjured from dreams.
There are those of us
who awake each day
to find ourselves
on a mountain pass.
Walking.