The Traveling Minstrel

Across time, over Earth, through the sea – I have seen existence.
In search of hope, of truth, of a new song, I traverse the wildness of foreign lands.
A journey alongside the mists of the unknown
Seeping between hills, a stampede of galloping stallions
with manes tangled among the stars, plunging over waterfalls into rocky rapids.
Flowing through the Amazon, a web of black and green –
slithering undergrowth, writhing and grasping for life.
Downstream, towers of sunny scales, higher than buildings,
the heat of a billion grains blowing one o’er the other.
A small village at the foot of the Swiss Alps,
cozy under a blanket of snow, tucked in by its rocky father.
I sing my tales to the strum of my lute, and my hat is filled.
Those towns are warm, even in Winter, with thatched roofs and crowded squares.
A peaceful lake collects at the foot of a family of earthen humps,
fed in plenty by the eternal flowing brook through lush evergreens.
Cloudlike sand absorbs my footmarks at the ocean’s edge, and
i gaze onto that vast expanse of life.
A sea breeze unfurls my hair in a crimson cape,
a salty spray drenches my face as the waters make my travels buoyant.
My music pales in comparison to the chorus of seagulls and the humpback’s hum.
Atop a waveworn precipice, I observe
the melting of cerulean sky into the depths of yawning sea –
a candle somewhere on the horizon extinguished with a cold, wet pinch.
Yes, my journey has led me across the Earth’s beautiful broken skin –
And yet again I find myself
back in the forest of Hatuga
as if I’d never left at all.
Did I ever?
No matter how far I go,
no matter how long I wander,
no matter if I seek to escape its borders
or hope to melt away into that sweet wilderness,
I make my way back here again –
or it makes its way to me.
Is it not curious?
Is it not Divine?
It Is.