A Small Country

I have become aware in the past year that I am more than the sum of my parts.

There is a small country in the south chamber of my heart
that was never colonized
by the mundane demands of practical dictators.
There, mist still hangs in trees
greeting weary travelers in mystery and delight.
In this country brooks flow free under auspices of daylight
Sharing their effortless song with a curious world
What would they do but sing?

When the oppressive power brokers lean in from their corners
they tell me I am not a citizen there anymore;
that such things don’t hold currency in this world
but in my dreams I know they are lying
because when I sleep the streams still run.
The summer sun still falls patiently on vast prairies
and the moon graces the night with her quiet gaze.
There I am human, peer to eagle, student to bear.
I hold no passport other than my birthright as a child of this earth
born to this land. Indentured to these relationships
not in debt but in honor.

Somewhere along the way
between my first gasp of air and yesterdays sigh
I forgot how to speak the language.
Fear became boisterous in her butchered tongue
“Love is too expensive” she hissed;
“You’ll be lucky if you survive.”
And yet I have survived, nation of dreams intact despite all odds;
the geopolitics of my heart favoring those places
with winding roads and borders that do not traverse efficiently across the landscape
but meander slowly, gathering friends and relatives along the way.

Standing rigid in their brass, televised, decorated and branded
the despots demand their dues
furious that such a place exists beyond the scope of their petty demands.
The joy of the sparrows must be brought to heel.
The value of the long morning shadows laying
across a dew-laden field must be captured amortized and pro-rated.
No free lunch or free travel.
Emotions must be documented and detained.
Who in me learned that safety was to acquiesce?

So here I stand at the barricade
casting angry looks into the eyes of my fellow countrymen
peering back through the holes in their storm trooper costumes;
inside someone’s child who wandered too far beyond the neighbor’s farm
and never came back.
In a moment of stillness between artillery rounds I ask them, quietly
Is this what you wanted?
And I sing to them the song that the brook sang
on the spring day they were born
when the rhododendrons were in full bloom
and pathways diverged in possibility.
And again, to their stoic countenance unyielding, but also hearing me
this time from the blood of my ancestors, I ask
Will you join us?