The Books We Carry

The Books We Carry ~ L'assemblage ©MichaelDouglasJones 2019

Often, in the last days of our winter fever, we look back at the crooked path we’ve worn in the ending season, using that same past to plan the future.

Weighted down, but ready, we bring our bricks and baggage to pave a perfectly patterned road ahead. Then, as always, the earth shifts, cracks occur, and we start to stumble; yearly, wearily living along another winding path. Shift happens on this planet, we can’t plan it away. We can make scenarios, make contingencies, but we can’t make sure. There is simply no way to chart the changes that come along in a decade, so finally this year, I’m leaving my bricks behind, while I wander a bit. I still have much of my baggage, but I feel lighter already.

I still have the books I carry, in my head, in my heart; the books I wrote, the books I remembered, the books with my scribble in the margins; that is who I truly am. I am as you are, we are of the ancients. We are of the now, and the forevernow. These are the books we carry; this is who we are. We are the waking; taking our first full breath. We are the words we whisper when we turn the page.

Breathing in, we are the blending of all books, the scribbling pencil points, the overwhelmed annalists listening for the silence between crow caws and motorcars.

Breathing out, we are this that cannot be named.

Breathing in, we are the gathering of grace; the last scribes in the retinue, tallying the miracles, illuminating manuscripts of unseen symphonies from early morning mockingbirds.

Breathing out, we are this that cannot be named.

Breathing in, we are all that ever was. Breathing out, we are all that ever will be.