Fellow Traveler
When you speak I can hear within my soul the voice of one who treads across the vacant marsh where I have lived. Did you see the crooked branch bent over the dry pond? Or breathe the suffocating haze across the endless waste? I wish I could lead you out. I do not know the way. All I know of that desolate plane Is that we enter it now and here, While yet on ground less solid. Look to the fireflies, And find the flowering vine, If you can bear it. Follow what defiance flies Against the cold southern wind. The gardener leaves nothing unattended, Even there.
-M.K.
“The Swamp” by Anton Mauve, 1888
what a poet you are
i am blessed to read you
i just read your words aloud
and they flowed from my soul
as if i had written them
such is the camaraderie
of those sustained by spirit
i will find the flowering vine
if i can bear it