This poem celebrates the contradictions of my outer life as a homebody and the crazy way my brain works in trying to make sense of the world.

Pilgrimage

To wander is the province of pilgrims,

And here I sit, no staff to carry,

No boots to bear me beyond these walls

Built of both concrete and self-restraint,

Hemming me in by choice as well as by chance.

And yet to roam through streets,

Or ramble in the bright woods

Is what my spirit longs for,

That spirit closed in clinging castle ramparts

Fitted with stones of uncertainty

And mortared with mortal fear.

Even here, though, there is a part of me

Which packs its bag and vanishes at whiles,

Roving with the winds of words

Through glades of half-formed fancy,

Returning richly laden with treasures never noticed before,

The minstrelsy of joy unbidden and abiding,

The lays of love unparalleled and without peer

Which lift me free and bear me far afield

To where all wanderers come at last to rest,

Where no walls wait to bind me fast,

But for freedom’s bond of faith and blessed fealty.

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