This is not the place where I was born,
But this afternoon creates a place that I have been before,
On soft green grass in late afternoon sun, shadows long,
Last precious hours before evening meal--
but timeless
languid
markless in progress ...
Other times, other spaces, I have lingered out in the world
feeling the sunlight on my skin,
the moving cool of shifting air,
seeing rich blue and bright green,
faint clouds and elusive trees
shaped in beauty that holds no memory,
only sense in the mind.
I glimpsed the slower pace of nature's way
and felt the beauty of suspended time.
The time of dreams and no dreams
under the lintel between now and not now
mind and body
seeking a union of all me to this place and space
melding together dreams and memories and sensations and perceptions
to this and now
to save it until the next time I return
elsewhere otherwhen to here now
beads of existence
(out of narrative, out of biography)
like the smell of grass, the feel of a nut, a pebble, a leaf --what form the talisman takes
each place each time.
This is home.
This is solitude but not aloneness
rich union replenishment
potency pregnant with the
future
created from the not now
pleasure
in being a body and a
mind
in this time and this
space.
Not in the wild but in the
nature of civilization
I find the earth my people give to me.