PATHWAYS STRANGE AND NEW





Down the new and strange path I went, going left and then left and then left until I did not recognize where I was. This was intentionally so, as I was looking for a new adventure of sorts. A Blue Jay guided the way at first, like a spirit guide or totem, jumping to and fro, but finally left. The sun was sparkling and benign, confident and strong, and I soon saw an area where once was some kind of farmer or landowners garden or place where animals were kept. All that was left was an old wooden fence, and no abode nearby. I imagined how it must have looked in its quiet but sure heyday. 

Maybe there was, speaking of heydays, a parcel of hay off to the side, sitting in the sun, and the grasses inside the fence were lower,- yes,- a rooster nests somewhere nearby in a barn and there the sun sort of squeaks in through a hole in the old and long and dark wall-boards. A man tends to something, - some little bricks or water bucket, and he wears denim and plaid and long shirtsleeves even in the sun as he knows there are insects from the woodland that bite and bother along with the chance to get cut or scraped whilst working with tools like shovels and axes and other. Its lunchtime soon, - but water is the thing, - that the animals and the few people around are then in need of, - for it is summer, and the sun is incredibly hot. 

Then I see through time that the family is gone,- for what reason and reasons I do not know,- and the animals left with them and moved on or passed on or were given on or freed and some of all. The earth rounds the sun many times making days and months and years and the grasses grow along with wildflowers and shrubs and some trees. Now- the fence is all that remains, - and it is lonesome and maybe a forest toad or snake roams under it, not knowing or caring about the history of the place. I carry on,- and the path is strange and still new,- meandering, winding, going,- and I see some spiders hiding under flowers, and berries that have for the most part died in the end of summer coldness of night and just through seasonal time itself. I hear a train in the far distance, and I notice that another bird, loud, busy, (I certainly hope it was a bird), is following me, - curious, keeping its distance, - back and to the right (or the left as I turn around to look a few times). 

I follow the path perhaps longer than I should, I muse, - and am somewhere I have definitely never been- yet it feels a bit enthralling and some other emotion I just can’t pin down. Maybe it’s the canon of alien and ufo literature I have been re-reading that plays a bit on the unseen parts of the mind,- for I was half expecting to see a figure, a statue moving, a spectre, a little man in the wood, a small dragon, a large dragon, a metallic ship, anything. Then I laughed to myself and kept going.- for the poets lauded and sought after, such as Frost, or William Carlos Williams, and especially Whitman himself,- didn’t need ships or other worldly creatures or any such thing- just the paths, the sky, the forests, the streets, the everyday. So, in a sort of rural and pastoral scene,- I continued, and eventually I was standing in a new and larger path- but, and this is not an uncommon phenomenon- though I had trod it before,- I didn’t recognize it at first- then- slowly, the recognition kicked in,- like someone coming out of a dream and knowing the old and trusted room, like a patient back from hypnosis, like, I could I say what comes?- a soul back from prayer?



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