Journey

"Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet." --Anonymous

Connections, cycles, time and love...these thoughts blow around in my mind like dead leaves caught up in the embrace of a dry wind. Why do some connections take root, grow deep, settle in around the wandering path that is our life, while others flit away like dust bunnies scattered into the air from a breathy exhale? How does love thread them all together, sometimes knitted into colorful patterns, other times tangled like yarn that a kitten has been playing with until the jumble is such a mess you can no longer ascertain the beginning from the end? Some days the light shines down on all of these rampant, often elusive patterns of thought, while other days the skies are black with stormy clouds, thunder rumbling the ground, rattling the dust and making it dance, hop, and move. New growth sprouts in the cracks and crevices of the spaces that are unsettled and still barren...new growth that is untamed, the only direction it reaches for is up, as it simultaneously clings to the earth on tender roots.My shoes have long been abandonded, as they felt blasphemous, forcing a separation between my bare feet and the path I so desperately need to touch.

I wonder at the final destination but only allow it a moment's thought, as I continue to travel, sometimes stopping to reflect, or take in the view...other times, I'm running full-out, sucking in great gulps of oxygen in an attempt to reach whatever I've spotted up ahead that's pulling me with an urgent, aching need. Long ago I stopped obsessing over the final destination--that was the day I fell rapturously in love with the road. I hold close the ghosts of those that have traveled with me but are gone now, tuck away the names of those who have made me stumble, and cling to the hands of those who continue to walk along side me as we travel around bends, sometimes in circles, always through cycles, to a destination unknown on a forever horizon.

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