Alternate Foundations

Forever gone are the voices of fearless trust

and long gone are the once cleansing rains

that now muddy 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 collage of experience to hang on the wall.

So suggest some of life’s learned essential lessons,

while others scatter the landscape with agony,

trying desperately to escape.

Still, for others…

death be the only sanctuary from the insanity of fear.

Yet…

What if someone's truth be a place locked safely away

beneath some naked honesty known only by one’s conscience?

For those who dare to seek out that place,

where stripped away layers of protection,

saturated with the tears of elusive answers

venture alongside nature's compass,

might there be yet another unexpected direction,

if one dares?

Perhaps…

That direction seen only by those whose naked past

is vivified by wanderlust,

where the adventure of life continues

after shedding mud-caked insulation.

Might such an epiphany

cause one to leap with abandonment

from the twisted abyss into another time?

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

to run, walk, and if necessary, once again

ultimately crawl through barbed spirals of isolation

into battlefields of unknown exposure?

Is it enigmatic, this naked home we seek,

without assumed walls and roof

or fortified landscape?

Is home only beneath yesterday’s foundations

where a bare and vulnerable essence beckons one to stay?

And if one’s alternate home be the purpose of the journey

what validation allows entry?

Those with answers must now ask more questions

Cogito, ergo sum