An Old Warrior’s Battle Cry

(Maori Portrait – Charles Frederick Goldie)

I am Donn, do you hear?

I am out beyond, striding the hummocky fields, liberal and at ease. No swallows rise to fret away like scattering leaves when I walk among them. Blades of grass spring upright and fresh when the sole of my foot leaves the ground.. No branch is rocked or lost by my passing. The fox continues to chew, the badger to dig, the hare to breed, the swans to circle low, the clouds to drift. And I am an atom of the whole, not limiting the sum, but merely whistling through.

Listen to me now, Unknown Brave.

I am not this poorly creation stretched before you helpless, with these distended genitals and these useless limbs. I do not own this face you see that has caved in upon itself. I am no monument to disaster.

Listen to me.

I am not dependent on this heartbeat struggling to gather and flush the fluids to bathe the tissues. I am not this voice conditioned and learned.  I am not any passing fancy that has chosen to wander the corridors of my brain.

I am as substantial as a sudden gust of early summer’s wind that tosses the bristles of the gorse, and leaves the faintest trace of vanilla, or of coconut, or of warm sweet forgetting.

Listen to me now, Unknown Patient Brave. I am stardust scattering. I am the genie, poised for the cork in the neck of the bottle to be loosed.

(Shooting Star, Sweden – Artist Unknown)

OM TAT SAT

~anandajyoti

About A.D.

Generally just Being. Nothing in particular, no claims to fame. I like gardening and the sea, nature, art in all forms from poetry to films and everything in between, and being in the company of my family.