Gravel, too large to fit between my toes but slowing me significantly as I meander down the dirt road in flip flops one size too big. Lost on the tip of a memory that I couldn’t place or couldn’t drag from the depths of my empty head. Pleasant smells and sounds that made the butterflies comfortable as they floated, riding the heated waves of summer rising from the misty river. Hands in my pockets too small for all the fingers, hanging on the nearest belt loop, dreaming of a time, a time. Swirling water, the sound pushing against the boundaries of mind, recalling a shadow standing in the middle of the path beckoning me come home.

A song on my tongue laughing with the sparrows of summer preaching peaceful bug hunting and murmurs of daydreams in grassy dawn. As history speaks the soldiers of yesteryear would cry of their loss, missing family, trudging through the muddy sludge pressing at all pace to get home. They cried as I did now, unwilling to let loose the simplest sound in alerting their friends to the crime of being human.  In silence I could see her pondering those momentary treasure gifted by God that make a man a family and a home the place of his perfection. This is the hallowed ground of mystery men, bygone age and forgotten intention best left forgotten by those without a quest for freedom and a hunger for victory.

This is not a place of unfortunate wandering, but the moments of quiet contemplation and realization that although outstanding, creation is not God. I am mesmerized for moments measuring the mental geometry of the flowers blasting forth to be captured in the eye of fortunate beholder. Some would deny themselves the splendor of God’s floral demonstration in glory, but for me this almost takes the cake. Though I use it as another cliche to describe something outside of my understanding. For a moment I must ask of your forgiveness for chastising you about the things that I despise in my own profile. It really bothers me because it is me on the face of a fellow follower.

I do not walk this path but run it for sweat, tramp it for regret or to forget and sometimes saunter it for relaxing committal to the me that I am meant to be. Listening to the waters threatening the shore and wrapping fluid lassos around anything that dares to enter its sanguine saturation, I am reminded of constancy and endurance. The water is patient because it is comfortable taking its time to do the work set before it and not leaving any pebble unpunished in fulfillment of its tasking. It does not hate the pebble merely befriends it for a time of refinement and travel downstream, much akin to colleagues. Why then do I resent the sending of your dripping or pounding fluidity and overwhelming intention within my own existence. You are simply, as water, sent for a particular purpose to which we may assign judgment in lack of understanding.

This path may not describe your relationship to the things of this world but it certainly does closely indicate my own. This path is my path and I assure you it will be thoroughly investigated, ventured and cataloged to memory for posterity. The things that have been buried or thrown down upon the wayside, have not be dropped or planted lightly but as seeds to a robust history along the path for which has directed me. It is my solace, my work, my journey and sometimes the only muse to any rhyme life may offer. I regale in its majestic resemblance to the king and delight in the visage of His predominance. This is His testimony that if there is a path, which this one is my own, then there is a journey, a destination and a distance over which I shall never be alone.