Hiking Home

His thick-soled hiking shoes tread too loudly to celebrate time's homing invitation to hear and see, feel and smell resonantly hidden diversity within Spirit's wooded ridge. He stops to break from sacrilegious pounding plodding echoes reverberating through ears attuned for inside voices, languaged listening and recreation, amusements excluded from wild nature's cathedral voices, receiving impassioned pauses for mutual gratitude, co-listening, warning of mindless human natured steps taken to conjoin this wise-rooted ridge, enfolding time's whisper shy adventure into natural placing pacing space. A darker cloud asks "What did you and your kids eat today?" Well, let's see, organic honey on pita bread... "How do you know it was organic?" It said so right on the glass, not plastic, bottle. "How do they know if the honey is organic or not? Do they interview or breathalyze each bee returning home? Do they ask each bee each time who this bee has been with? In that intimate being kinda way, playing with whose pollen, exactly? Did the bee stay within her orthodox organic certified playground, or did she wander off the farm and free range right into your toxic neighbor's chemically condomed hydrangea, or maybe the always too enticing hibiscus, flaunting her ample skanky wares?" Well, I don't know, I just took the bottles' word. I wouldn't begin to know how to respond to your issues, about breathalyzing slutty bees addicted to poison. "OK, so what else did you feed on today?" Well, I showed my kids I love them. I used my please and thank yous and you're welcome, and namaste. I wished them peace before their baths and before turning out the light at night so they could see stars and moon slivering through dark. The neighbors provided birdsong, especially those mourning doves calling out their resonate alto fractal coo, their rhythm and courtship bun-dance. I fed them massaging back rubs and hugs and shoulder squeezes, gentle taps on knees and elbows. I stroked their drifting drowsy heads from frontal lobes toward brain stem. My fingers rubbed between each totem in their forceful flowing chi-spines, root toward crown and back again. I fed them sad and silly songs and mindful ho-ke-po-ke. We fed each other love stories of romance, sadness and despair, fear and anger, passion and grace; absorbent love-life stories, well told and worn from dawn's redress through dark's red-blooded thumping night. We are what we absorb, both before our days and after all. His thinner-souled shoes retread more softly anticipating home's warm invitation.