Eyes look at me walking backward, but I can’t see them, only feel them

I walk backward but I move forward, seeing the point clearly, I keep going

Forward, walking backward, with eyes watching me

Backward to a point I can’t see, seeing only where I’ve come from

The point I see, I walk away from, gaining ground forward, walking backward

I leave the place I came from, walking backward, looking forward

Sometimes I try to grab hold of the caterpillar thoughts that crawl across my mind. They are like those shadows or ghosts appearing just outside our range of vision. When we look at them, they are gone.

Like the ghost, I’m looking for those thoughts that lie just outside my grasp.

I think they are like a frightened child who hides behind the couch so they won’t get scolded. Feeling all the while wrong, but not knowing why.

Some thoughts seem like they are part of me. I feel them connected to my soul leaving me entangled with shame. I long to cut myself free so that I might know some innocence of being once more, just a simple joy – a long draught of wonder at the sheer light of living.

 My caterpillar thoughts are not my enemy. They are stains left behind after the mud-slide of happenstance – of the boil and roll of one soul’s days lived out in a solitary life.

 But, in truth, they are painful. They sometimes bring a sickly odour of shame’s breath right here beside my face, like a wet tongue in my ear from an unwelcome suitor.

 Time is more than ticking clocks and linear plans. Time is a builder of fortresses where youthful hopes turn grey behind cold stone walls, where caterpillar thoughts form deep fissures, becoming well trodden tracks across the mind.

 Time is also an un-builder of fortresses. Love’s accomplice in the re-knowing of one-self.

 Youthful hopes are never lost. They visit afresh despite the greying and the ripening of years. They believe all things. Hope all things. See beyond the range of sight, to that simple joy, that sheer light of being.

 Try as I may, I find it hard to fathom how sweet and tender love can, ever so gently, without conscious intent, move those caterpillar thoughts somewhere else.

 Love’s arms warm cold stone walls and comfort the child behind the couch, whispering sweet breath beside my face like a welcome suitor who comes courting in the even hour. Comes, even now, after the mud-slide of happenstance into my days of shared solitary life.

always the promise of new
like birdsong or morning
what mystery the unknown
a distant white puff
can rain or shade the day
either way life comes
in whispers or crow caws
like a prayer call to hope

softly on the doorstep
take off shoes
wrap the heart woven head scarf
pause a moment
bend thoughts and memories
soul’s knees find the floor
and wonder bows with me

breath in, breath out
balanced between
days gone, days to come