382 days on the road. a solo motorcycle sojourn thru 48 states

30 September 2015 thru 16 October 2016

i went on the road 18 months ago

to find the space i’d lost 

between my life’s bookends  

sprinting wholly identified from deathrow’s claws

and cocooning from my youngest son’s highschool graduation       

in that broad corridor of sun and shadow

i grew old, body tilting left

mind agile, flirting with death

less angry than senility can remember

not ambivalent, and yet not acting

caught in a bluescycle 

tears salty as ocean

emotion still as morning’s dew 

fountains of idea cascading 

slumping shoulders 

i went on the road to find the pearl, renewal

to find the self missed in the lost years

to reconnect abandoned divine impulse 

i went on the road to find an america i never knew

and found a self that had been hiding in plain site

there, on a soundhealers table in ancient santa fe 

on a cathedral walk in taos, speeaking to the redrock’s face 

talking at a muslim woman’s table in idaho falls

sleeping in a daughter’s bed in San Antonio

drinking beer at a mexican border town

akimbo roadside on i-17 south to phoenix, at 

the mercy of a trucker and statecop’s helping hands 

in 10 silent days of meditation, drinking in the southern california desert 

sharing pains of resurrection on the lakota plains of north dakota

hand drumming with families in olympia washington 

and gardiner maine

on the road i found an essential i

in the eyes of hueman mirrors

looking back at me from windows of compassion and empathy

and then, i came home 

to a self unwilling to welcome its re-membering

and so these days i meditate a lot 

to reconnect the dots, and resist inertia

i meditate to push out into the universe my best self

and hold silence in the clanging deconstruction of a nation

at odds with its people

and its best self

still unfound, and unclaimed