May it be for all of us

 

Friday night’s sometimes best

Just jammied and comfy

On one’s own couch 

In one’s own space.

Old songs – or maybe new ones –

Feeding the weird satisfying ache.

 

Free to remember

I can still hear Neil Young unplugged 

Straining out van windows and over wild blueberry fields.

Light from a lantern glowing warm

Those summer nights in Maine

Not quite held at bay by a tent’s thin nylon.

 

Desperate to find satisfying knobs on which to hang my proverbial hat

– Definition for my chameleonesque existence – 

I thought freedom was in that with which I associated myself.

Thought there were specific ways-by-which to be liberated.

That it was a matter of identification

…and successfully remaking myself thereby.

 

Come to find out that freedom is not bound or dependent 

On circumstances.

I can’t put my finger on it.

But it blessedly seems to have found me…

And surprises me in graciousness and mystery.

My only requirements now are to be and abide and rest:

Not function in order to.

 

It was magical – all that youth and “freedom.”

But here’s too.

This age and these (seeming) boundaries 

And I’m no less free.

Constraints are (largely) self-imposed – no matter my station – 

My freedom then was contrived, in a way.

(But no less remarkable.)

 

Living with wild abandon

Forbidden fruits turned ashen and bitter

My fences my discontent and

The unknowing of what I sought.

Left me so ravenous for life and meaning

That it (I?) got swallowed up in the pursuit.

 

Now that any contrived direction seems impossible

My stationary relishing

Feels more revolutionary

Than a more obvious freedom.

It’s all real 

– The pursuit and the staying –

All feeding into one little 

– but one remarkable – 

Life.

May it be for all of us.