Home Again
The snow dragged heavily around his aching feet, and the air was cold enough to snap the frost that quickly formed upon his breath, but he kept his eyes on the horizon and his heart was warmly bundled under layers of flannel and wool. The sun bounced blindingly off of tiny diamond flakes as one hand gripped his pack, while the other clung, with fingers chilled, to the branch of a fallen tree that bowed under the weight of his weary soul. But he pressed on. Long he’d dreamed this journey while holed up under farmer’s fields half a world and a thousand fallen lives away from here, looking at the sky and seeing flowing locks of auburn curls, and sweet green eyes, before the smoke moved in. Sometimes the meadows of this valley seemed too far away for even dreams and hopes to pull him through and counting every breath til his return seemed pointless to the boy inside the man forced to grow up faster than anybody should. But he’d pressed on. And now the knoll was cresting and the trees were waving silent like the hands of many friends, saying 'hurry home my boy for she is waiting at the mill, beside the river where your love flows!' Then he felt the swell of freedom as he gazed upon that building, and he’d never seen another quite so wonderful as this! For despite the missing boards and cracked and chipping paint no other ever looked so good as home! Then he pressed on. Despite the heavy snow around his feet that hindered every step, he had to run, until he saw her standing like an angel at the door. And he tossed the branch aside, cupped his hands around his voice and called her name across the wind. And she ran into the snow to meet her love upon the hill and wrapped him in her arms, half a world and a thousand fallen lives away from where he’d left the boy that was, and found the man that she took home. january 2004 ©Janet Reid
Awarded by Poetic Constellations~ Nov 22, 2007
