All Along

I don’t know when I knew 

that writing would take me 

on a journey, 

dipping into and around 

roads across quilted prairies, 

a hot air balloon soaring high in the sky 

a jet ski that would send me 

splashing across 

the top of waterways long or wide, 

through forested granite mountains

tromping through snow banks in the shivering cold

sketching my own journey with epilepsy

but when my pen 

found notebooks and journals

and each morning with tea 

to sit and write yesterday, 

or plans for today 

or dreams for next year or 10 years along.

When I saw shelves and stacks of boxes 

filled with all the morning musings 

I guessed that I had known all along.

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, 

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

~ Pablo Neruda, poet and Senator of Chile

(1904 - 1973)