Glass Beach, Mendocino, CA, 18 June 2017 (Photo: Manuel Garcia Jr)
I found myself in a cloud of unknowing,
surprised
after journeying with intention for so long.
Everything had fallen away,
renewed emptiness gave life clarity ahead,
bleached of the past,
a wild tropic strand glinting in the blazing dazzle
of liquid crystalline awareness,
the light of day alone in its pristine expanse,
a surviving castaway whose old world drifted
as ghost mist evaporating far out at sea
while fresh footprints in the sand
led from moist cool to dry warmth
up to beckoning verdant meadows deeper in.
It’s a kindness to remember the old moorings,
but I’m no longer there, unnoticed still by long habit.
People don’t annoy as much when not around,
and there’s no reason to explain what isn’t needed,
unthrottling time, dilating space,
receding horizons, demisting vistas.
Things all have their times
and all times fade to nothing
beyond the reach of entangling rescues
by urgent nets of anxiety and possessing wants
left echoless in the wake of this absorbing quiet
filled with possibilities of thought.
Don’t worry to reinter me into old illusions,
I’m not lost, I’m free.