Trenches

Forever lost are the voices of fearless hope

and long gone are the rains that muddied the foundation

Even as we long for the innocence of heroic action

framed honors were not meant to be for some

and there remains only the mud of experience to nail on the wall

So say some of the dying

So say some wishing to escape the agony of...?

Is home only found beneath the buttons of shielded resistance?

Can death be the only sanctuary from the insanity of fear?

Is one's true home but a place locked safely away

beneath some naked honesty known by only a few ?

Might those who dare

to seek out that place

where stripped away layers of protection

saturated with the tears of elusive answers

find nature's compass pointing to yet another unexpected direction?

And is that direction

seen only by those whose open buttons

ravaged by wanderlust and the shedding of mud caked insulation

leap from the twisted abyss with abandonment into another time?

What drives us to leave behind the habit of place and protection

to once again run, walk, and ultimately crawl

through barbed spirals of isolation

into those battlefields of the unknown?

Is it enigmatic, this home we seek

without assumed walls and roof

or fortified landscape?

Is home only beneath the buttons

where a naked and vulnerable essence beckons one to enter?

And if home be the purpose of the journey

what validation allows entry?

Those with answers must now ask more questions

Cogito, ergo sum