AVANT SOUL

We are only able to embrace and hold
A few individuals in each lifetime
Then the rest fade and disappear down an urban road
Of need, illness, babies and business

The gypsies are few,
The friendships far too rare
The days of traveling lightly,
Carrying a knapsack, dissolve in a dream -

Duties knocked on the door like a large, well-meaning,
Yet poorly educated nurse

They might make my bed and bring me medicine
But they are no one I would like to snuggle with,
    in reveries, nor travels as buddies
Across a carefree country road

Remember the roads? Perhaps you never experienced them:
Off the pavement, home to clouds of dust, unpaved,
Connecting to meadows and sunlit views.
Thickets lead to secret cabins, others to trails
Where one can climb and see the summit
Solely for the purpose of understanding

Fences are built of wood, or wind breaks of eucalyptus,
Easily jumped.  We make fun of cows grazing in fields,
Ever-looking for another clump of green to chew endlessly
Businessmen, we'd call them, and laugh, and their ears would point,
Following our laughter as they remain prisoners
To pastures of their endeavors while we're free to roam.

Only now has realization yielded to me in a dream:
Three wondrous gypsies appear in my civilized room
To invite me to a party in the woods, as I struggle
To write down their names and phones, it hits me
I've not camped with them in many years.

A pounding at the door is the nurse of necessity
Who begins to straighten my things
And sterilize memories of my youth.

To travel again, not in hotels, but sleeping on floors
Of comrades, singing for my supper, without pills
Or appointment books for important things
That don't matter.

To discover the empire of the self, to experience camaraderie
Amongst poets and artists, to fish in a stream,
To throw off one's clothes, to slide naked down a waterfall
    in the river water's canyons,
    surrounded by polished granite boulders,
    protected by textural pines like body hair on
    the curved landscape of nature, blooming with wildflowers -

And not to care that your shoes are unfashionable,
For there's no need to impress uptight suits
    in steely pompous towers, or drive SUV's
That roar down freeways yet go nowhere.

Only now do I realize
The wealth of what I have,
And how few friends have the freedom to go traveling
Down that disappearing country road -

Forsaking bank balances, surrendering credit card statements
And giving up to God the crying
    of anxious mothers and babies in diapers

I've passed the age of bearing children
Yet haven't suffocated the child within
And it isn't that I don't honor the adult,
But this grown-up is burdened
With stature's cheerless
  and humorless wins.

What empire could possibly be built more impressive
Than sugar-spun structures of fantasy in the spiritual domain,
Through which light and music, art and color
Live without worry, with a gypsy's repose?

Only to remember, before the light has faded
That roads still await my traveling again,
And I need not be slave to responsibilities' goad

Only to savor, before my inner child becomes jaded,
That journeys and adventures need not be forsaken -

        I'm just brave enough
    to forgo successes' weighty load.