[Haiku 6/6/2017] - Awaken

Awaken.

My limbs start to move,
as if with life of their own,
dust falls from my bones.

A beat of my heart,
forces my eyelids apart,
life enters me again.

I walk as a man,
who has long since forgotten.
how to move or stand.

But muscles remember,
As if end of December,
The ice melts away.

Inside that chamber,
it was once lonely ember,
now a roaring flame.

It writhes, consuming,
Furious, lashing, fuming,
Free of being tamed.

Now I, free again,
Run without shackles within,
Power fills my veins.

I will steal the stars,
Battle the Leviathan,
My hands hold Gaia's reigns.

The Crow's Nest

"I just want peace." I can't tell you how many times I've said it, imagining some perfect quiet I could meditate to, some absolute stillness only an ethereal could achieve.

Now the wind in my ears is deafening, the water crashing against my face as our boat pierces another wave. As my heart races, my eyes relax, focused, and time seems to pass slowly. It's still loud, but also silent - like when you get pulled under and everything seems muffled by the rippling currents that sweep past you.

In this moment I knew peace, not in a trance but in life. With its taste on my lips and its air in my lungs, the static slipped away like a radio being tuned.

The point of peace was not to hear nothing, but to more clearly hear something.  Tie me to the masts, so that in the siren's voice I do not leap into the water in despair of having been deaf all these years. When I get back to land untie me and let me walk a new man. And let me walk in the sun, instead of running from its shadow. Let me reach for what I love, rather than fear to lose it.

My hair blows in the wind now, making it wild tendrils that dance unruly in the wind. But I somehow rest still in this chaos, a fixed point of gaze. A direction, my direction, and the only adventure that could give me peace.