Imagine..

A cold windy day.
Your palms are shivering
Under the gloves you wear.
With you are your loved ones
Laughing with play..
You sit down on those chairs
Chatting away...
Or may be waiting for some one
Who has lost their way. .
You look around and smile
You have had a wonderful day
May be you drink cofee
To keep the chill astray.
You click a photo
To remember someday...

.
To remember someday. 😁

The Södenberg sisters sing to me tonight,
Their words sending me far from this slightly cold balcony,
To a realm of asphalt and dusty wind.

For my first 10 years there were no roads,
But a plethora of paths,
Criss crossing,
Winding to and fro,
Foot beaten little things in a great forest,
Filled with trees, creeks, waterfalls, and animals,
Birds singing beautiful songs as they sail through the trees,
Squirrels chattering from their perches amongst the great branches,
Whitetails observing my progress of the child .

As a young boy I'd sprint down these paths,
Unheeding of the odd roots that were placed along the paths,
So happy to just be moving forward,
To see what played around the next bend.

The next 10 years were simple things,
A two lane town road,
Buildings of my hometown on lined either side,
Their facades as they were,
Before the place of my forefathers got too big too fast,
Where all it's citizens knew my parents,
And by extention, me,
The birds and squirrels still there,
Although their number greatly diminished.

My pace was greatly diminished,
No longer some great sprint,
But a gentle jog,
Taking in the familiar sites,
But excited to leave this place,
Impatient for a change of scenery and anticipating some great adventure.

The next 3 were a treacherous yet exciting road,
A winding mountain pass,
Steep sloaped and lined with switchbacks,
Giving beautiful mountain vista views,
But with this new road also came the realization,
That the road could be a dangerous thing,
One slip could give way to a great fall,
The once gentle jog gave way to a cautious walk,
Wary of foot placement and step,
No birds here,
No squirrels,
But instead of the rumble of far off thunder,
And the howling of distant wolves.

Then came the next four,
The thunder no longer far off,
The wolf howls no longer distant,
The asphalt cracked and split,
Closed in on both sides by a thick and menacing wood,
And through the darkness of the nearly moonless night the darting shapes of beasts could be seen.

Rain slashing down,
Galing winds battering me,
My body worn down,
My walk but a limp,
Taking my broken self forward,
One dragging step after another,
A constant struggle to find the energy to make it one step further,
To find reason to keep going.

But like some great magic trick the wooding cleared,
The rain stopped,
And the wolves pulled back.

It was here that I found you next to me.

This new road is a bit cracked,
A bit disused,
The desert beautiful with Mesas to either side,
My pace quickened,
No longer a slogging trudging thing,
But also not a run,
A relaxing stride that feels good and steady,
Churning onward to the mountains in the distance.

I look to you and you smile,
You smile back,
And it is here that I see hawks up above,
A fox to the far right,
Observing these travelers passing through it's lands.

No longer an unlined face,
Bearded and festooned with a smattering of scars,
Earned through foolish fights and terrible tumbles,
But gladly won and worn all the same,
Sun kissed skin taking in the pleasant warm arid air.

I know not where this road leads,
But the excitement returns once more,
And that I no longer need to travel it alone,
That traveling is never meant to be done all on one's own,
That it's the company that makes the trip worth it.

With that the duo's song ends,
And I am transported back to this balcony,
The air still clung to with the slipping grasp of winter's last vestiges,
And it's begrudging release so close at hand,
Bring forward new beginnings,
And new roads to be traversed.

Admiration is the cousin of envy,
as I learned long ago in Austria.
I knew a girl from a village in the Tirol.
I don’t remember her face,
Except for the placid smile
on her berry red lips.
She was not beautiful, but pretty
in a Mägdlein sort of way,
"smelling of crushed daisies and sweat".
But her long, butter-yellow hair,
seemed to have fallen from the sun.
She wore a black, Dirndl vest
that hugged her torso, a white blouse,
and a long. striped, pink skirt.
Even her legs were beautiful,
With tiny, blonde hairs that glistened.
I wished I could be like her:
Simple-seeming, unaware, unquestioning.
I watched her stand on a rocky ledge,
On a little mound like a pedestal
That overlooked an green-blue alpine valley.
She was a poem or an imagined girl
From a fairy tale or an ad for Priumula.
She was  a goddess escaped
from the the netherworld
of dairy barns and milking cows.
I thought that she might never return
there from her lofty peak at the world..
But another girl stood beside her.
A spartan sort with round glasses
And a face like a Pug dog.
She seemed to stand guard,
In a sexless, violent way,
Threatening those who might approach.
I fantasized about pushing her off the cliff,
Just to rid us of her presence.
The altitude was spinning my thoughts,
Wondering what would happen
To this Hummel Fräulein someday.
Would she follow the other youth to Vienna,
Smoke and drink espresso in a café,
Or come back to her alpine home
And milk goats while her children played?
The next day, as if still drugged,
I strolled across the bridge to Germany
And the river path to Freilassing.
There I bought a new, blue blouse
With a heart shaped neck
And brown, corduroy slacks.
It was the best I could do then
And Dirndls were not cheap.
So I spent the summer
As an ersatz Austrian,
No longer an American with jeans.
My freedom was almost euphoric,
Including dodging classes
About Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill,
Die Dreigroschenoper,
Those overrated poseurs!
(Except for Mack the Knife.)
I even attended Mass at various cathedrals,
just to hear Mozart or Schubert dance
up in the arches with cherubs,
or in front of ancient, colored glass
in the gloom of medieval stone.
I accepted that The Tyrolean Girl
And her antique, sunlit style
Were as inaccessible as
Gentian and columbine, mist-shrouded
on high peaks wrapped in clouds.
I once ran to see some up close
And nearly passed out.
But knowing that, I felt their charm
Had descended from the heights
To entice us in the valleys,
With pink striped cloth, gold hair
And amethyst flowers.
They flee past us like time,
Swift as the rivers in Spring.

If I was a king of Asia I would give you all the gold there is
But I'm not even prince of Persia, all I have is love and dreams
Let me show you land of legends, land of honeymoon and rising sun
I am not as rich as Ali Baba, but I promise we'll be having fun

I'll take you to Bali the gem of Java Sea
Then we'll go on to safari a little south of Abu Dhabi
I'll take you to Maldives to swim in coral reefs
We'll enjoy the sweet papaya on the islands of Pattaya

I'll show you lake Baikal, Tibet and Taj Mahal
We'll see Macao, Yokohama, Hanoi, Jeddah, Jaipur, Jakarta
I'll take you to Dubai, Dushanbe and Mumbai
We'll spend some starry nights in yurts near the city of Yakutsk

I’ll take you to Tashkent where melons got their scent
We will taste all sorts of apples in the city of Almaty
I’ll take you to Beirut we'll go nuts on dried fruits
And the coffee with vanilla we can try it in Manilla

I'll take you to Kashgar to shop at old bazaar
Then we'll fly a magic carpet to the markets of Qatar
We'll see ruins of Karakorum the old capital of Moguls
Then we'll go to Kathmandu and then Karachi and Kabul

We'll discover caves with treasures, make three wishes all at once
All at once will turn to a fairy tale, like in one and thousand nights
Let me show you feast of colors, take you cross the dunes in caravans
Even if I don't look like Alladin, I sure know a thing about romance

I'll take you to Taipei to see its lovely bay
We will sip on Coca Cola on the silky sands of Goa
I'll take you to Shanghai where towers touch the sky
And the best of architecture we will see in precious Petra

We'll go to Ashgabat, Bishkek, Busan, Baghdad
We will see Great Wall of China and Cambodian Angkor Wat
We'll see the Everest, mount Fuji, Gobi Desert
And it's certainly my pleasure to take you all around Asia!

so the day is going well
which is never a good sign
time ticking past somnambulantly
inducing a soporific state
I find hard to shake
with rocking carriages
as I traverse to my travail
through millennia of archaeology
passing long extinct dinosaurs
turning magically to crude oil
Roman armies with Gladius drawn
ready for action two thousand
years on, still trying to conquer
the unconquerable realm
then an eco-warrior
of shabby description
yells my carbon footprint
is an abominable *******
it’s an electric train I holler
how much greener can I be fella
the Romans are looking friendlier
by the minute they only wanted
my freedom not justification of existence
the soporific state abates
the modern world is against me
now I’m running late

Don't go past the horizon.

There's nothing there.

Do go to the Horizon.

There you'll find a friend.