Dear Reader,
I’ve always had a bit of a wander’s heart. It’s hard for me to settle down. Im always longing for what’s next, a dreamer who tends to long for those things that are just out of reach. But that “elusive edge,” the one that plagues my restless heart, is also a fiction, a desert oasis fading in the heat. Its only when you stand off at a distance that it seems real, but as you draw closer, it fades until all you’re left with is sand and hot air. There with nothing to hold on to we realize an all-important truth—
Life is best lived in the present.
To be present is to avoid the trappings of the future, that thing we so desperately want to control but always seems to elude us. The present invites us to be, to notice that which we ignore, to settle into ourselves, and in turn, truly know the person inhabiting our skin.
Yellow Plains was written in a coffee shop in the East Village (cliche, I know). But there, amidst the hustle and bustle and the clicking of laptops, I tried to capture that feeling of discontent that seems to drive much of my work, putting into words the groaning of my restless heart. If you’re like me, I hope this poem speaks to you and, for a while, settles that longing that keeps you from sitting still.
Enjoy!
YELLOW PLAINS
I imagine myself an explorer
Riding horseback across
Yellow plains of flowering grass,
Looking for that elusive edge,
What some men call the end.
Of course, it never comes.
The horizon, always
Somewhere farther out
And hard as I ride
I can't seem to reach it,
Galloping until to my horse
Is skin and bones.
It’s then I realize,
I’ve been this way before,
Back when I first set out West,
When the grass was still green,
And the oceans sky blue.
Back when we were something to be proud of,
Just naive enough to settle down
And make this waste a home.