The Mighty Viking

Free as the Summer

I race

carving an invisible groove through

the spruce-whiskered mountain pass

The canopy arcing overhead

 

I rush

Through the trees, and howling with mirth,

Shadow and light splash around me like surf

My heart has raced to these rhythms since birth

The beat of the wind on the sea –

the spray of light, dappling trees –

and here on this mountain, of forest and turf

I ride down a ribbon of asphalted glee

 

I run

a gauntlet of cliffs, beside me rising

trees

Standing sentry, holding high their glistening swords

jeweled in emerald arches
 outside the rail,

Seeing the trees – watching, listening, standing sentry over the roads below.

They stand in stillness, while the twisted switchbacks rip through them, and though I cannot hear them, I know they whisper.

These trees, they are still, and to be in their midst is to be still.

I fly

There is a peace amongst them, not just of stillness, but of fulfillment of purpose.

I think of those places.

But still my mind races,

to the beat of the wind.

Or is the wind breathing

to the beat of my mind.

I cannot tell.

 

The trees stand, waiting, watching, listening.

They wait for the lumberjack, for eventually he must come.

They stand sentry, but when he comes,

They will not sound the alarm.

They will not try to flee, nor hurl the lumberjack from whence he came. They wait.

They are still.

For when the lumberjack comes, and they are cut,

their waiting will be over. And they will not have failed,

for their purpose was but to wait. And to be still. And to grow.

When their time is done, they will lay down,

and become part of another purpose.

 

I feel the wind, rushing about me, and it syncopates the thoughts in my head.

They rush, my thoughts, and are never still – they flow and rush, and jumble and carom, and sometimes cavort, up and down the mountainsides, through the woodlands. They move and turmoil, and seek, and quest,

and when they have quested,

when they have answered,

they quest again, for so they must.

It is what my mind does.

It watches. It listens, and paces against the stillness.

For so the stillness must someday come.

And when it comes, I will not raise the alarm.

I will not flee it, nor try to hurl it back from whence it comes.

I will sit amidst the stillness,

I will lie down, and become still. The wind will die down and rest

I will rest. And I will not have failed,

for my purpose was to race, and so – I have raced.

And now my race will be done, and I can find peace, as part of another purpose.

I will race towards stillness, as I must. The trees know this.

The wind knows this.

It knows me, and I know it.

I will become still, when the wind inside me is still