Beautiful Knowing
The Badlands (photographs taken by me in July 2018).
Beautiful Knowing {Terror of Banality}
by Wheston Chancellor Grove // Thursday 9 August 2018
Grass trimmings, a redolence I love, invades my senses—
Arousing the amygdala—
And my old friend—
Melancholia.
Wet heat—too damn hot.
Walking through neighborhoods I become arrested—
Terrified by the banality of suburban life.
You can keep your cookie-cutter houses.
Let me sleep on the ground or in an attic
With a view of the firmament.
No “place” on earth feels like home to me.
Some people—few—make me feel myself,
wavelengths at rest.
Home is where the heart is—
Not some cliché phrase. Truth stripped bare
Crowns the day.
Is everyone asleep?
What if I’d stayed in The Badlands forever?
That dawn with a morning dove’s tabernacle call caressing
The wind—and the sky my soul’s contentment.
Sound became clear.
On rocky slopes I lay, imagining death to be this way—
Pure and light—infinite volume.
Far away the silhouette of a horned sheep
Stood on the crest of the canyon whence I’d come.
What was this strange creature—me—doing on his hilltops?
Why did I return—here, to this?
In the midst of society the loneliness becomes keen.
But in the wild, the vast empty prairielands,
And into the forests populated by perfection,
I am less alone. Proximity of humans
Evokes in me the sensation of
Being miles away.
No place on earth is home to me.
A sorrow deep—deep within the well-spring
Of all my desires, yesterdays, and tomorrows
Leaves me wistful.
I’ve given up trying to explain.
My home is light years away, yet
As close as my breath.
As easy as walking through a door.
It is hard to stay grounded when everything fades.
I fear I am more sane than most.
I carry the weight of impermanence;
Hold silent counsel with the knowledge that
Our cells remember every moment of
Every lifetime.
When I dream, I dream of water.
An oasis where I stand and scan the
Horizon, discovering how life as we define it
Is the mirage—a dream state.
To awaken is to be called mad.
Depressed. Eccentric.
Rather I slip from this world with the pain
And ecstasy of splendor laid bare
Than numbed, immune, blind and deaf --
In line with the herd advancing toward
The cliff of no return.
Poignantly sad to step back and watch.
Dreams change. Years slip into decades.
Beautiful knowing I choose my way.
