A single step, side by side

O’er valleys deep, and rivers wide

Will you be with me all along?

Your voice singing my favorite song

A single step, full of fear

Can I trust and hold you near

And when all else I love is gone

Will your voice still sing my favorite song

A single step , full of grace

We’ll hold the warm sun to our face

And gently we will struggle on

As your voice sings my favorite song

A single step, so it begins

Neither knowing where it will end

You were here, with me all along

With your voice singing my favorite song 

This is a poem I wrote for my wife when we first met.

wayf 

I held my head up toward the treetops anticipating a sight of the creature I heard. My eyes strained against the white-gray background of clouds and bare treetops. Using only the call of the bird as my guide, my eyes searched until I finally saw him. A beautiful adolescent hawk stood at the very top of a tall, leafless oak tree. His cry seemed almost forlorn in this frozen environment, as if he was longing for something he did not have. Suddenly, across the meadow to my right, another hawk cried in answer to him. They began to engage in a conversation of sorts. I watched as the first bird used the same method I had used earlier to find him. He looked, eyes straining, and would cry out periodically. Finally, he flew in the direction of the hidden bird’s cry. And I was alone.

Standing there in that white vastness, I felt strangely more at home than anywhere I had been before. By myself, accompanied by only my thoughts, I felt that this was where I was meant to be. My whole life to that point had been leading up to this single moment of solitude.  How I loved the emptiness of that moment. Suddenly things were clear to me; and I saw myself in a new light. In one instant, I had done away with all the pre-conceived notions of me that had been placed there by society, and knew who I was. The cold wind that blew against my face was no longer bitter and harsh, but welcome as it reassured me that this world I saw around me carried an air of certainty that could not be tampered with. I knew that things would be as they were and accepted that it was of little consequence if my life did not go as I had planned. For one infinitesimal second, I had known true peace.

I stood there in the middle of an open field with forests on every side in the freezing wind of winter,alive and knowing for the first time in my life. It was not much; in fact, you could say it was nothing special at all. It was just what it was. I heard the hawk cry again and my eyes looked up toward that white-gray sky just in time to see the two flying off together. I looked after them for a time enjoying the tranquility that had washed over me before I left the moment behind forever. When such moments pass, we tend to look at the passing with a bit of melancholy nostalgia. I see it now as the opening of a new chapter in the story that is my life. And each second that I am alive is just another chapter opening.

I am not hurting, and I am not sad

As my feet touch these ragged streets

This world is weary, growing old

But I just keep on being here

I stand in the bustle of a crowded city

Tired lamppost leans on my shoulder

I am awake, vibrant, alive

And in the background Duke’s Orchestra

Plays “Black and Tan Fantasy”

Looking across a deep ravine

Winter landscape

Frozen river no longer flows

Through the trees

Alone in a frozen wood

Silence all around

Solitary, I stand alone

The song plays on

wayf

2005

As everything goes dormant

And icy fingers cover the land

Ideas play in my mind

The words wake up

And thoughts perform

Their celebration dance

While the world around me sleeps

The contented sleep of winter

My mind wanders off again

Pondering the possibilities

Of the universe

wayf 2005