Prose Poem: The New Beginning

Thoughts sweep through my head, but I'm waiting, looking out of my train window. A spark is about to ignite, a miracle to happen, as the forest suddenly ends and a vastness opens up—plowed fields, the white circle of the sun above the mirror of the waters, a city in a milk haze and blue mountains on the horizon.

Find, inside yourself, in your darkness, the path, so obscured from the outside. Abandon the habitable to make room for the Spirit. Become the black of plowed land, the emptiness of a spring sky, the inconstancy of a mountain river, the quietude of the roots of age-old trees.

The new comes imperceptibly, quietly, as grass grows under the melting snow. The old is no more, and the sun continues to rise above you, the sunlit air is still fresh, and the winged shadows of the clouds, your castles in the air, still float along the land despite they were being blown into tatters on yesterday’s wind. The fields are wider, the mountains higher, and cleaner is your sight washed by the spring. What was genuine in the soul did not die, it was only waiting for its hour, like a grain buried in the dirt.

A child in an azure coat is clutching a lollipop in his chubby fingers; a herd of sheep is grazing on a hillock; an old man with a dog, motionless, looks at my train passing by.

Everything hidden, unspoken, unknown inside my soul settles into the images that the road offers so generously. They form the unbreakable alloy from which time casts the dream bell with its unique note. At some point, it seems that I'm about to catch it, but suddenly the space between us opens up, filling fast with endless fields, and only the spirit, soaring up like a bird high in the sky, is able to briefly see its horizons.

To rise above the world—and stay in it, in the very thick of things, in tightness and tension, struggling for every inch on the way to the goal, where sweat and blood, pain and thirst meet. It’s our body that proves the truth.

A vast space opens up before my eyes again, with plowed fields, a city on a hill, and blue mountains behind. The meaning of all things could fit in one spot now, like the white circle of the sun caught in a pond’s mirror.

The world acquires its true dimensions—those of my childhood when I didn’t try to master it.

The eternal child in an azure coat is still blissfully clutching a lollipop in his chubby fingers, and still rampant is the despair of the mortal man who has crossed the midlife threshold.

The moment lasts forever. Generations come and go before my astonished gaze, and the first people, laughing, still stand in the city gates, meeting the spring sun.

The exiled gods return to their homes.

Credits

• My sincere gratitude to @whoshim, @jrhughes and the whole Isle of Write Poetry Pond Workshop for deep feedback and precise suggestions.
• Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

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