How do you walk in a forrest without getting lost?
And how do you huddle in safety when night’s net robs daylight’s grace from your eyes?
Should you form yourself into a tight round ball of skin covered nothingness?
Or should you hide pressing your spine into the cover of the first tree you find?
Or would standing proud smack bang in the centre of the forrest somehow shield you from it all?
What did those first few rare women who walked this alternate ground do with all of their years?
How did they survive the wilderness of thought that washes over the skin,
Turning all that was once solid into a sea of mysterious longings?
For these thoughts that ensare me now are not placid little things.
They are no gentle streams of logic glinting promisingly with hidden light beneath the sruface.
These thoughts are a sea, raging with resentmet, rolling over on itself again and again.
Building walls of saltiness that blind and bind the inner me.
Rendering the mask of my flesh void.
Leaving only my bones, like a boat, scuttled by time, resting on rocks both hard and unkind.
Yet still these bones of mine crave the flesh, muscle, tissue,and sinew of thought to clothe them.
They long to hide my nakedness away from the eyes of those who would pick over me for their own amusement.
Turning me from a person into a platter of stone, laid bare at the feet of an empty eyed idol.
Forcing me to try and contol that which I no longer own.
For I used to think that I knew myself.
If at least nothing else in this world, I thought I knew that.
Till I realized that all I really knew was what I’d been told.
By those who had never walked naked in the wildernes of thought.
I hear you with all of these wilderness thoughts! My mind goes into very similar thoughts. I relate very much to your words here:
“Till I realized that all I really knew was what I’d been told.
By those who had never walked naked in the wildernes of thought.”
Thank you Angel….
It took me a long time to realize that other people don’t necessarily experience the sensation of being truly ‘lost in the wilderness of thought’.
I’m so glad that you can relate.
Cheers
Seventh
“Forcing me to try and contol that which I no longer own.
For I used to think that I knew myself.
If at least nothing else in this world, I thought I knew that.
Till I realized that all I really knew was what I’d been told.
By those who had never walked naked in the wildernes of thought.”
Ahhhhh, beautifully expressed.
The fascinating part of facing your forest or Long Dark Night is that clarity and self-recognition lie on the other side, yet most are more afraid of the moment to hope for the future.
(PS – Please do not take this wrong, but I spotted a few spelling items in your piece. I want to be brought to mind of these in my pieces, so I share with you that you may want to edit for spelling. I do love the piece, so please do not be offended. Thank you for sharing.)