The Long Way Home

[raoin]

Along the river bank,
against the Gothic backdrop of church spires and great stone bridges
the artists and the farmers sell their wares.

I stroll amid the clusters of well-dressed locals and tourists:
past women with small woven baskets filled with the makings of dinner,
past young lovers who walk with locked hands,
their heads bent in the private susurrous of gossip shared,
past the jumble of workers seeking sustenance and spectacle.

The early summer day is cool with tiny whispering breezes
pulling scents of cool water, distant oceans, new mown hay -
and the sun seems like an easy and welcome friend playing between the leaves of Poplar trees
glinting off of the steady pace of the river.

I will know it when I see it, I think
as I drink in the heady smell of new bread from a stall I pass by,
the market and the river seem to stretch far into the horizon.

The near palpable flavor of fresh fish rises from another stall
and I pause to admire the rainbow of the scales, the crisp whiteness of the ice,
and the affable patter of the stall owner selling to the crowd.
His jokes about the one that got away are tried but still manage to elicit laughter -
he is glad to be here today, his world is right and true.

I smile, he has teased it from my face like a earnest suitor, and continue walking.
I feel out of time, a star amid planets;
set apart and yet immersed, I am a whole grain lost in the pounded flour.
The people around me could be speaking a hundred different languages,
I feel I would hear only the sine-wave rise and fall of humanity,
their sounds curl around me, I am a stone in the river and they pass me by.

At a soap-maker's stall
jasmine and gardenia hang and flow in the air like kites.
I scent one then the other and more beyond that,
like a flock of birds, I pick one scent out and it is replaced by yet another.

I have felt myself slowly pausing, have felt my legs -my feet-
seem to grow reticent to move on. To root where I stand,
to pull me to the side a tangle of tendrils and vines.
The grass, the patchy cobblestones, the trilling fountains tucked in small garden alcoves
hidden shady patches occupied by benches stone and wood - open and inviting.

Full - all the market is the whole world and I am present to all of it -
known and knowing.
Rich with the time and tempo,
this moment is a storehouse filling with seven times seven years of grain.

I find a stall selling new plums
they shine darkly, their gradations of color
evoking ancient kings and sunsets, death by violent hands and the bleeding force of new life.
I choose the first one my hand lands on.
Paying, I feel as though i have traded a small burden for a great joy.

I continue on, palming the plum from hand to hand. Rolling.
I feel it polish and snag beneath the skin of my thumbs.
My shoes scuff the soft ground beneath me, the ground is going to swallow me one day
and the dust rises languidly as I pass along this path.

my first bite is gentle.
I hear the rip of skin, feel the tear of flesh against my teeth -
the tart tang condensing into smooth swelling sweetness.
The sun shines, I hear a guitar softly tuning up ahead.

---

I am now only one week behind. this poem-story is based off of the chosen theme:

"And he was rich-- yes, richer than a king--"
from Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson

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