Far But Here

From the outside I see but don't touch. The sound I hear but do not claim. The glance, the years, a world long gone, still there, still here, yet I am far. An observer, a thought process, a wonderer.

Stretch out my hand I don't, for to take is to belong, and to belong is to be trapped. To bid farewell to the unknown, the undiscovered, the edge. The existence that is feared, that is avoided, the edge of the jungle, not of trees, not of beasts but of a path not traveled.

The frustration, the sadness, the nostalgia, too deep to be understood by even myself. The deer horns peering through the thicket, the engines roaring on the asphalt, and I like a branch, like a leafless oak, my branches touching the railing with the wind ever so gently.

I cannot hold on, I can but barely touch, and feel as distant as the moon, as if I can hover and rise, yet the roots, deep roots, deep under the unmovable rocks. The beauty passes by and the longing doesn't dare, for there is a world and there is a world. A known world and an unknown world, and the price to pay to choose the unknown world is to hover like an eagle and see below but never dive, for the hunger of the predator is not there.

The closeness cannot be felt. Recognized but not known. Seen but not understood. Where the mountains meet the water, where the clouds hide the sky, the same land, the same road name, yet they are there and I am here. And they will go and so will I. But it's where they don't wander where I will be standing.

Where I think there will be no one else. And when I sleep I will awake to a different world, to the same church bells and the same sounds of life but again with yearning for something that I cannot attain, for it would be to banish the high seas of emotion, thought and discovery.

Which I fear more I do not know and cannot decide.