The Traveler

A connoisseur of words
Scripter of footnotes
Scrawling in freehand
Calligrapher of roadways
Journeyer sans GPS
A traveler, preferring
Plain pen on paper
And maps, pondered

Criss-crossed lines
Of places he knew
Routes and back roads
There and back again

To him maps breathed
As words, as open windows
Letting in masses of air
Here’s where you are
Where you haven’t been

Only late late at night
Thumbprinting pages
Scribbling his heart out
About ends of the earth
Did he get a sudden jolt
A vision of a bend of road
And just over a gentle rise
The longing lights of home

©2012 S. Michaels
Breakaway – Spreading Wings

At The Hotel Toro

Dilapidated, she sighed
Dappled by filtered sunlight
Faint birdsong under the arbour
On the porch, five geranium pots
called ‘The Garden’, overlooked
a rough path edged by jagged rocks
and a promised ‘Ocean View’ blocked
by a seawall, a perch for pelicans

A pebbled doxology, he nudged
Waxing poetic, and they decided to stay
to observe developments discreetly, hoping
to find something that seemed to be missing
in this shabby echo of something they knew

The place had few amenities, and yet within
the old Hotel Toro’s crumpled, tired façade
no illusions seemed to free them to stay
to observe and listen, as sea light reflected

In a thousand ways, a certain timelessness
took over, letting them relearn happiness
a sensibility of being, almost forgotten
until this wanting place had found them

©2012 S. Michaels
Breakaway – Spreading Wings

Pain that precedes progress leads to praise

Reblogged from Sun & Shield:

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God designed our relationship with him through Jesus Christ to be a series of spiritual progressions and advances. Since we live in a fallen world and have a fleshly nature competing with our spirit man, those advances which lead to greater spiritual responsibility may at times be preceded by a period that causes us some pain and trouble. What Joshua and the children of Israel faced physically as they began to take possession of the Promised Land parallels what we as Christians encounter when God wants to …

Spiritual progress …an excellent reblog from Sun and Shield…

Not Quite Dancing

Floating, ought not to be unnatural
Strange lightness of being, exorbitant expense
Silly wild wingspan on air, swimming oxygen
Above quiet patchworks, releasing blankets
Dream horizons, slipping gravity’s stark hands
Then a soft plummeting flight to earth, here

Yes here, awakening, though not quite dancing
Gathering twigs, stretching limbs stiffly surreal
Taut, eternal nest-building, reworking
Everyday routines somehow forced tip toes
And within this strange ongoing life-long ballet
An adaptation, looking forward to wing-tests

©2012 S. Michaels
Breakaway - Spreading Wings

Branching Out

No royal secret
Simply sweet clarity
Observing surrounds
Following upward twists
Jagged icy branches
Touching sky to clouds
Evening walks, words adrift
As breath on frosted air
It’s the same for trees
As for people, he said
An inner knowingness
Eternally reaching, flowing
Creating on the way up
Not waiting to arrive
She was almost afraid to ask
Was this about them?
And as soft lights of home
Combed the dim cul-de-sac
Scattering windows as stars
The cityscape lived aloud
Everywhere, branching out

© 2012 S. Michaels
Breakaway – Spreading Wings