Intro

He rode his solitary mare

down through the far away,

up to the crest of happenstance

and then beyond, to the point of departure

There below him, the sea crashed

against a bitter wall of rocks,

salt-stained granite heaved

high up against its swells

Against the endless pounding of mercy and anger,

backing and slapping, backing and slapping,

stealing away a grain of sand at a time

from the fortress-like faith of invincibility

He sat astride his saddle of solitude,

caught by the rise of the wind off the bluff,

gusts of air hurled by the raging beasts of ravaging storms

beyond the dark gray cloak of the horizon

He sat thinking about how there are places like this

where no man belongs for long

but to which some people adhere themselves

for a period of seconds

How there are places like this

that the conscious mind cannot understand,

but that the heart accepts as they are –

unseen and untouched

Accepts them on dim days of distant strife,

on mornings kissed with the sweetness of the sun,

in the bold light of sunsets reflected off eastern skies,

in the coldest darkness of a howling night

He was an artist

painting his lines in circles and swirls,

hoping to catch the heart of the wind

that lifts and carries a falling leaf

He was a lover,

lost beyond the far edges of his canvas,

ready to rip away his own flesh

to suffer the purest pain of love

He was a soldier,

shed of uniform and marching in isolation,

weary of life yet far too full of it

to shed a drop of another man’s blood 

And he was a stranger unto himself,

awakened by the least intentional of dreams

and left to sit, bathed in salt and sweat,

high above the churning catastrophes of life

And he was the man who came from all of his other worlds,

searching through the sweetest depths of insight,

striving to reach across that last expanse of air,

aching to seize whatever was there and hold it, as a single breath.