NINJAS AND NOMADS

my fingers are ninjas, and they are nomads, and they are nimbly fighting the forces of numbness and ambivalence in the world one word, note, hug, and object picked up off the ground at a time. they clasped hands eagerly when i was just born, and they cried as they clasped. now they clasp objects, and stones from the riverbed (making room for other rocks to make their beds there), and invisible things snatched out of the sky and made to exist here on land. they trace patterns in the soil, and they dig trenches in the sand, and they form snow into little mounds and turn the snow into ice, melting it with the heat from within them and then allowing them to freeze harder in the winter airs yet to come. now, they reach around to touch things, and to touch the wind out of the windows of cars, and to touch instruments and make them less foreign, and to touch one-another in solemnity. now, they curl against my body as i sleep, and they stretch like yawning cats as i wake, and they drum against my palms to the songs that brew themselves in my head and die in my head, not needing to escape because they have lived for a second within the framework of my mind. we are soldiers, every one. and our weapons dance in our eyes, for they are our souls. and we shine like lighthouses across the bay and skip our lights out across the water to one-another so that we may bring the ships of other hearts to our shores for some time. we are noiseless beacons, and we grow ideas in our minds every day out of little seeds put there by the world around us, and these ideas grow larger, with many-a-limb, and they stretch their arms out and dig their roots down into our hearts. some of our ideas are secrets, and these are the elms by vacant shores that see the lights across the water and say, "i hear your silent siren call but i am here, and you are there, and i am content to be here on this beach alone." we are beaches, too, and the sands that lay atop us are each fragments of thoughts and memories and smells and tastes. none of these are ever totally gone, though they may dissolve into the swells of the ocean or they may be carried to other shores, or they may sink deep into the earth over thousands of years and melt in the core of it, for the earth, like our bodies, has flames in its heart, and it burns and melts that which enters there: not to destroy it, but to transform it. and the things that we let into our hearts are transformed if they catch word upon the wind of the temperature of our embers. we are burning up so that there may be heat around us, and we are hot to the touch so that our hearts may be treated with care, and our fires die down but this is a gift to the darkness, so that it may roam and, like the sun and like the fire, have its day too. if the fire in the earth dies down, as one day it might, it is to let the stars shine brighter: to let those things which are father away make their presence known. if the fire's embers wane, it is to let the moon reflect itself on our eyes and bounce back to the sky with a glow too small to recognize, but there nonetheless. if our hearts did not burn, there would be no snuffing, but their would also be no sense of relief found in the snuffing because there would be nothing to compare the silence and the darkness to. darkness, why the long face? you are a canvas on which the stars may be painted. darkness, why the frown? you are the river in which the planets may swim. darkness, why the fear? you are that which allows the lone wanderer to see the stars and find his way home to his own fire, in his own stove, by his own bed, under that tree that he watched grow as he watched himself grow. darkness, celebrate yourself for your own respectful withdrawl as you appreciate the light for its willingness to sleep. our hands cannot reach up and grab the light from the sky, but they can create the light themselves through the implementation of tools around them, and in this way they only hope to imitate the stars, at best, and in doing so to let the stars know that it is they who, amidst darkness, lead them home to that place where they may dig deep into wet soil and plant something there and watch it grow as they watch themselves, growing still.

once again i'm hearing the call of the fields and the call of the wanderer and the call of late winter nights. my feet cannot stay in one place, and the earth shifts below them. once again, i'm hearing the call of the stillness of those late hours in which all things shift as we sleep, in which minds turn themselves around like a sailor learning to jibe for the first time, and the seasons walk away and new ones walk up when we are not looking. winter taps one on the shoulder, and suddenly his presence is there, and the air is cold. he is bright, but he is dark. he is silent but every molecule of air is full in the space that he clears out before him. he is a rogue, and a wizard, and from his wand comes snow, and it greets only those mountains that grow tall enough to meet it as it falls. once again, too, to honor the notion of duality, i'm feeling the pull of the pressing-in, the weight of the cold as it pushes us back into our places and tells us that we need not roam because we are already where we belong. it is as if the cold is whispering to us, "this is my time, and these fields are my fields, and if you care to walk upon them you shall become as still as the frozen blades of grass around you." once again i am feeling the call of home, and bed, and memories; and i want to clear my mind of all that is my own and take in the words of writers long gone, and the words of the natural world around me, and the words of old folk singers from years long past, and the words of philosophers and scholars and chemists and gurus and hermits. i am feeling the call of the hermit, and yet i am feeling the song that only a group can sing because it contains such elaborate harmony. i am feeling the pull of the ocean even though i cannot see it, and the time is nearing when i will untie my little boat and push off from the rocks and set out into the sea and sail until i can see no land on any horizon. i crave the sanctity of vastness, and emptiness, and i crave the humbling laugh of the ocean and the tides. i crave the unknown, and the letting go and submitting to the forces that be: those that will take me to whatever shores they will. i crave adventure of a solitary sort, and perhaps i will tell stories of my internal wanderings or perhaps i will not. some things can only be shared with the wind, and the wind whispers secret things that are only shared with the soul and with no one else. the trees bow down toward the feet of the snow somewhere, in a place i've been but left, and the snow numbs the trees as they bow. the trees thank the snow for its freezing properties, and welcomes the cold embrace, for the embrace is one of such cold that the tree is allowed to sleep and rest and recharge in a way that it would not be capable of were it not for the snow's urging of stillness upon it.