Chattering Cephalopod

A poem about finding and letting go.

Trees, like saints, have petitioners. I was one of them. A word thumper. I praised the huckleberry. Prattled the forest empty of birds. I dragged my own storm behind me, breaking limbs. Cornea-skinned and blister thin, I humped my sinew and bone over rocks and logs, trying to be wild. I had a head full of words and too many hands. A chattering cephalopod.

Every pilgrim starts eager. Longing to find something, but also to get away from something. Each step a practice in balance.  Pitch and yaw, to and frow. Part refugee, part immigrant. Powered my quest with questions. Found a rhythm. Close your mouth, open your eyes, walk till you find your feet, till you find your path. Tethered to a job, my Camino was a weekly mooch for green. I would sidle up to a needled shore of fir, at first dowsing out a forest gate, but eventually finding the way by memory. Passcode to the green vault. I still go, my travels more liturgy now than glossolalia. Either way, I chant out my breath, chords of that old logos, reticulating language around a sacred path. The journey itself, becoming home.

As patient as a grandparent, the forest accepts my wandering. Absorbs my questions. Like an old snag weathered long, I’ve lost my bark and thorns. The smooth wood shows swirls of exposed memory. Sometimes, eyes resting finally on nothing, that old hunger for productivity gone, I collapse on the moss, a failed heretic kneeling prayers into the humus, spilling out the worn gears of vigilance. In the wash of cedar-sounds, I shrug off pretense, like peeling off a wet coat. There is something dangerously calm there, a blanking anonymity. I move on a tide of scent. Earthy bite of fungus, tang of wild ginger, lingering wood resins. The sound of wings carries a feathered blur up from the floor to the canopy. Draws my eyes to the sky, great field of blue under which the trees stand, green as genesis, unfolding their steadfast rings, a leafy language filled with infinity.