- A Long Walk
I took a walk along
Rustling fields of wheat
Tall and proud for a nearing harvest
A constant breeze
Offering subtle resistance
Rippling from the sea,
Wearing blue with appetite.
Borne in the sky
A small hawk
Stays in place:
Stationary,
Eyeing a vanishing prey;
How unmoving the landscape
With only waves of chaff and seed,
Like the sea it skirts below.
I walk along
A long way still
Yet I’ve gone nowhere
In particular,
Not to any destination
Not as fast as the birds
Swooning, dipping, gliding back
Over the water
Around the budding fig trees;
More like the bees
Bristling about a flower
Parking inside petals,
Orange blossoms, tucking in
To nectar, perfumed regalia, blooming
The fragrance of life teeming
Without subtitles.
Nature never moves
From its place; it sways
Like a dancer thinking wordless
Ever-evolving, undressing
Cycles of still slowness
Unfolding beauty,
Producing without ego
Minting new definitions
From the ephemeral;
Naked, without address,
Waking each morning
Without questioning consciousness.
Life is not a driven wheel:
Another day unravels in stasis
Bending over eventually
Bowing essentially
Under the weight
Of its own abundance:
Unafraid of the impending
Doom of night
Where we all fall quiet then,
Like saps,
Obedient to the curfew,
No longer shuffling by decree
Nor hustling by demand;
The paranoia of contagion,
The hysteria that is only
The prerogative of the bi-pedal.
And I’d forgotten
So much of this
And I’d neglected
Though the road has been unflinching
That I was even on this walk
That I’d always arrived here
Balancing, in my place;
No distance is afar
When you suddenly
Recognize Paradise.
Saro Nova (April, 2020)
