A Spartan’s Journey
by Odin Roark

Yesterday’s lessons of history…

How delicious
the lack.

How permanent
the smile.

How rewarding
the lost pain.

To leave behind
the self who is not.

To catch up,
to the self that is.

How frightening
To have lived one’s life wandering
to and from so many surroundings.
becoming like sequestered mannequins in disguise,
flesh and bones covered with personas of fraud,
breathing only one’s own breath,
fending off reality from inside bubbles of fantasy,
deriving self worth by peering out
at genuineness feared.

Oh, that aspirations of wealth and power
someday might require less enslavement,
allow one to live less fearful of one’s limitations,
embrace an austere honesty instead,
where a spirit’s shelter requires no roof,
no walls,
no floor,
only being,
where certainty’s serenity
remakes itself,
loses itself,
continues discovering the deeper “self.”

For the fortunate…

Such is the Spartan life,
an evolving journey knowing no end,
remaking itself,
losing itself,
admitting mistakes,
fraudulent actions,
past mirages,
acknowledging snarled highways as “their” way,
discovering the need to go off-road,
rise up above the sacrificial thoroughfare
to a more rewarding passage;
the gift of no passing lanes,
middle lanes,
shoulder lanes,
or the running out of lanes.