straight and easy is the path of righteousness
The late childhood days and the early youth make seem so easy
With passion and contentment I take it with ease
With a smile and an eager heart I join the soldiers of the cross to tell of the master of it.
Marching over was never hard .
You see this path has so many perfect derailed paths attached to it.
A perfect path of love has a path of hatred to it
A path of joy has a path of sadness to it
A path of peace has a path of war to it
And yes this is a path of righteousness but with a derailment called sin
Very tempting, absolutely charming
My eyes glaze to this path and see no point of this path of righteousness.
Great is your faithfulness O Lord
But exciting is this path
Or so it seems.
One mistake
Waiting on the path of righteousness to stare at this derailed path
You see, an idle mind is the devils play ground
The derailed path of danger
Pulling so many to its fold
Only by a simple glance.

A path seldom walked, it seems, overgrown by the broken
Things of this world, scattered here and there ,
Threatening to remove clear light found so deep,
So bright, at its destination end.

Where I am called, I think, by the divine, heavenly
Counsel above, to wait for feet which soon will
Tread upon this trail laid from foundation of
World, created for this moment, this meeting Divine.

So I wait, upon a bench of prayer, placed along side
By spiritual hand, knowing by chance encounter,
Laid out from beginning of time; I sit, I pray
Encounter living God, nourished by His Word,
His plan—His hope, makes mine!

I notice now, that here by bench upon which respite
Comes, paths diverge, goes every way which
Feet may trod, while still I sit, and pray, and
Wait, as those go by, no connection still, He
Enters in, through Spirit, Holy, divine!

One path is huge, and easy staggered down, no resistance
Found. The way that many want, of comfort,
Ease it seems, yet leads only to the stagnant
Waters of this world, of brokenness profound,
A bellyful of emptiness offered all around.

Others not so wide, not so easy a stroll, yet still leads
To pitfalls, shattered lives, cracked, ruined,
Destroyed. Leads to defeat, but to the feet
Walking along, not so easy to see. But lives
Crushed are offered on its way.

So, still I sit and watch, wonder why I’m here when
All surrounding me, people go, not realizing
He has put me here, as a guide, knowing path
To blissful life, a heavenly price, a toll, already
Paid by One that came, is yet to come.

I see the path, some take, bright light upon their lift-up
Face. Cool breezes of rest, refreshment, come
Tumbling down. I want to scream for all to
Take, but heavenly hand tells me to wait;

Something inside, it stirs my soul, speaks so clear,
So encouraged to my heart; a spark of His
Reflection consumes my desires, my dreams,
And makes me only His. Time is soon, I
Know—I watch with His given eyes.

I see a soul, so lost, so broken, alone, come staggering
Down this path of life upon which I’m called
To sit; to pray; to wait. I gaze upon this life—
A life of knowing defeat, without hope it
Seems—my  heart breaks as does His.

A connection made, as eyes meet, mine full of life,
Comes from Him, with eyes that know no
Peace, no calm, no serenity; eyes that are
Searching for meaning and purpose, and
Above all else, unconditional love!

The One speaks to me, my soul responds, as slowly I
Rise from this bench of mine—I seek this
Lost soul, to find a connection only He can
Provide—to walk with, to guide, to hopefully
Choose this path of life.

This lost soul, a boy so young, so broken still,
Misses the path I so long for him to take,
Choosing death, destruction, empty promises
Of Prince of this world, whispers seductively
Into his ear; he listens—Treachery!

But still, the One speaks to me, prods me to go down
The path with him for just a while. I’m scared!
Assurances come from up above, that His
Guide, His Spirit, will accompany us as we
Seek, we see, what brokenness this world offers.

I realize now, this path divine, as I look around, take
In, learn; this path can be found all along this
Path of life. And so I’m called to walk alongside
Those who do not know, who will not find, unless
Drawn by Spirit divine.

So I walk for now with this lost soul, on a journey of life,
In hopes that He will use me to introduce to path
Of heavenly hope, of lives made clean. He chooses
Wrong path now, but, oh, the hope of broken one
Discovering that path divine.

The sun rises tentatively through the forest heights behind the palace. In the pre-dawn light Jia Li has secured water and fuel for her visitors and despite the attentions of the pack horse men, who have returned from an evening at her village the worse for drink, she settles to feed her infant child. Meng Ning enters to seek her counsel. She already guesses his intentions and answers his brief questions with confidence. She knows the route to the Red Slate Path, perhaps four li distant. The path is clear, though little used. It is not a place those of her village visit, though she has learnt that the path itself defies nature’s attempts to cover its existence.
    Zuo Fen is standing on the terrace as Meng Ning returns to the Emperor’s Hall. She has slept deeply, is refreshed after a period of meditation and, despite the cold, has been washed and massaged by her maid. She appears dressed for walking, her boots, fur cloak and hat in purposeful combination. As she surveys the lake flocks of wild geese and duck chatter and squabble as they float on the surface. There are some experimental flights, pairs of duck taking off to fly in wide arcs only to return to the same stretch of water from where they rose in tandem. Soon the geese will leave to fly across the forests and moorland for distant harvested fields where they will spend the day foraging. Meng Ning points to a distant peninsula jutting out from the northern shore of the lake. Behind it, he says, lies the cove of the Red Slate Path. Perhaps there they will be able to understand more keenly the why of this mystery.

‘At such a distance,’ says Zuo Fen, ‘the detail of a boat would be quite lost. I imagine the peninsula acting like a pointing finger to its floating form. There is already fashioning within me a possible story that might explain this mystery.’

She smiles warmly at Meng Ning who bows his head rather than stare into her jade green eyes. She moves closer to his standing posture, taking his left hand secure but tense against the balustrade of the veranda. Lowering one leg before the other she slowly kneels, removing her hat, loosening her fur cloak that now spreads itself of its own accord beside and behind her. With both hands behind her neck she lifts her long hair found to parted and tied in simple peasant fashion. Raising her hands to full-stretch her sleeping hair warm from the bare skin of her back slowly cascades forward and across each of her ******* to curl like two cats in the bowl of her robe.

‘Mei Lim is with Jia Li’, Zuo Fen says curiously and with a voice Meng Ning has not encountered before. ‘I fell to sleep dreaming of your kind presence and the joy of being touched and kissed.’ He cannot see her face as she speaks, only the quivering fall of her hair across her kneeling body. ‘I awoke feeling your breath on my cheek and so brought your limbs to entwine with my own.’ He now senses the delicate unguents of her body; they compass him about, his hand falls from the balustrade to touch her hair.

Finding her right ear his fingers describe its shape, its sculptured relief of folded forms and crevices. He is becoming faint with something outside passion that requires him to go beyond her ear and flow of hair about his fingers. He unties his cloak, letting it drop behind him. He removes his boots and outer garments. She follows his example. He moves to her side, adopts the position of the swallow resting on the wind. They face one another.  To the accompaniment of their breathing, her hands begin a dance in the space between their lower limbs as though they are birds turning and falling in flight. Unlike the courtesans he sees at court her nails are short, her fingers long. Then, it is as though her hand holds a brush forming characters and she begins to write on his body with short deft movements this way that way describing her flight of passion. Some intuition tells him to allow this, and not to seek repricocity, as it seems from her breathing that these very actions give her the greatest delight, bring her to the edge of the first coitus. Eyes closed, he moves his nose into a glancing embrace with her own, feeling there a semblance of perspiration, that tell-tale sign of a woman’s readiness for the deeper embrace. She responds to this with sighs and swift movements of rapture that envelope him, and now, as she quickly brings her limbs into a right conjunction, he places one hand beneath her, the other to recline her body gently to the floor, her cloak becoming a pillow for her head.
    He now looks directly at her, her face expressionless as though all thought and feeling has entered her body in preparation to receive his own. She does not blink. There is a moment of great stillness, a great wave of calm breaks, moves forward and pulls back – and again, again. In an instant he will enter her Jade Gate to caress and kiss and move where only his Lord has visited. He knows that once there he will seal his own fate . . .
     It is the talk of poets that women are often at their most sensitive to love’s attention in the morning hours, and that this was, for so many reasons, the most impractical of times for men. Zuo Fen herself had written fu poems that took the reader to the most intimate moments of a concubine’s experience in the morning hours, those times when alone the body gathers to itself its essential nature, and is often caressed with the woman’s own hand and thoughts. To understand such circumstance, to hold its sweetness as an abiding taste during the formalities of the day, only to release its flavour in the pleasure hours of the night, was a manly attribute, said to be treasured, indeed honoured by women.
      When Meng Ning withdrew Zuo Fen lay for some while letting the unaccustomed circumstance and its location only gradually allow a return to conscious and present thoughts. She pictured now her journey to the Red Slate Path, Jia Li, her baby on her back, striding beside Meng Ning, then herself and finally Mei Lim - who would have entreated her mistress to be allowed to accompany her. There was the glade, a small bowl in the hillside where it was just possible to see a small cave from which, glistening, the broken patterns of the slate path fell after half a li into the lake. She would investigate the cave. She would walk to the water’s edge, where the trees stepped into and reached over the lake to lay a carpet of fallen leaves. Then to see the path gradually, gradually disappear into the depths.
    Whilst Zuo Fen, with her eyes closed, projected her thoughts forward in time, with accustomed tact Mei Lim left those accouterments a woman needs after the attentions of a lover. She feared for the young man, though she knew her Lord prized too much his Lady of The Purple Chamber to effect jealousy or display anger.
    As the sun cleared away the thin cloud and approached its zenith the company broached the crest of the hill above the glade. It was, Zuo Fen had to admit, just as she had imagined lying prone and in disarray in the Emperor’s hall. In silence, and in the company of her imagination, she now paced from cave to path to water, and standing at the very edge of the lake’s bank focused her mind to envisage the events of twenty years past.
     It was as though a rhapsody was already formed. She found herself recounting the tale in her world of characters where there is only present time. She felt her hand describe them with the flow of her brush, heard the sound of its movement across the thick parchment. She was slow to notice that Meng Ning had disrobed and was entering the water. Without a word she watched him move through the carpet of floating leaves, some sticking to his nakedness, and onwards, slowly, following the submerged path until his torso then only his shoulders were visible. She then knew what he hoped to find, even after the passage of so many years.

She saw it all, suddenly. The sorcerer Yang Mo and the Emperor’s second wife descending the Red Slate Path as a cavalcade of fire and smoke, loud flashes of light, noises of brass and clashing metal enveloped the glade and the boat itself. The watching company witnessed for a moment the couple disappear under the waters only for their collective sight to be shrouded in a climaxed confusion of the sorcerer’s devices and effects.

When, finally the smoke cleared, the boat and the lovers had vanished.

Zuo Fen watched Meng Ning disappear from view. She imagined him, as the pearl fishers she had heard tell of, diving down to the depths, holding his breath to seek what might remain of the illusory boat. But time passed beyond the possibility of what she knew could be endured by human-kind. The surface of the water remained unbroken. The division of open water made by Meng Ning in breaking apart the carpet of floating leaves was already reforming itself.
   Removing her cloak and her boots, and unpinning her hair, Zuo Fen stepped into the water. A memory floated towards her of bathing in the lake near to her summer retreat. Water held no fear for her, only now the cold consumed her. Her loosed hair, and her elaborate untied robe settled on the water’s surface: to surround her like a lily pad, she the budding flower at its centre. She felt her feet still firmly on the Red Slate Path, her chin now resting on the water’s surface. Whatever had happened to Meng Ning she knew her action to be compliant. She had immersed herself with the very element that had brought him either death or, as she knew in her heart, a most honorable escape.

For me, there is a path between my heart and my head.  It is not a long path but it is a very used path, a circular path.  I am always on this path before I go out to another path.  This heart-head path is my cross roads.  It is where my house is built and this is the house that I am always changing and it grows bigger and better.  I live on this path, Heart-head Lane. Every adventure starts here, the main house, the big house, the house that is protected but there are no walls around it.  The house with all the windows to see all that life has to offer.  The house that has the open floor plan, that no matter where I stand, I see the Love, Joys, abundance, prosperity and even those lil fear monsters that are hiding in the basement.  The house on Heart-head Lane is where I work and deal with all the facts, my reactions and stuff.  Where I surrender, let go of stuff and open up to the new, the good and the ride always starts and ends here.

Even though this is a short path, Heart-head Lane, the house is huge, the yard goes on for days, both are unlimited and unconditional.  The house has a good foundation, Love and Truth and a strong roof of Freedom.  There are times I forget what my house is built upon and what cover it, but I always feel it there.  Deep, deep down to my core, I always know I am protected.  For this house on Heart-head Lane, is always mine.  I know no matter what the change, the lessons received and given, whatever the path I walk down; I know the house at the cross road, that house on the short, circular path of Heart-head Lane, is always there, a light that shines out and leads back to Love, Truth and Freedom.  Whatever level I have moved up to, I find that house with its changes and growth, welcomes me, just as I am, just where I am – giving and receiving, open to all, unlimited, unconditional and powerful.

I Love this path, Heart-head Lane and I am thankful, blessed and oh so grateful for the house that is built on Love and Truth with a roof of Freedom.  My house, my Life, the beginning and the end of the rides I take.  Here at the cross roads,
The house on Heart-head Lane

Curtis C