A frog speaks to me in a sea of green fields that stretch from where I sit inside my car on the side of a vacant, winding road, to a distant point in eternity, beyond the mountains and the valleys and all the now vague nuances and cares of a troubled world.
And my heart sighs fondly at the chirping of a robin that serenades me from its perch, an owl calling in the distance, and the wind that whistles around my ears after blowing over waters that flow nearby.
I breathe in slowly through my nostrils, inhaling the sweet smell of summer grasses – the fragrance of the trees – and I let it go for the hopeful promise of another day. “This is not heaven,” I remind myself, “this is my home.”
But it is not meant for everyone, I’ll admit. Just like steel monuments reaching like gods to numbered points confuse and numb my wits, amateurs are often lost in this half-forgotten twilight, and many never come back. They are the ones you read about in all your papers and essays, “the disappeared” in Walden ponds.
No, it is true, this is not a world for weekend warriors – it is a battlefield for our souls. That is not a lilac – napalm – not a rustle – explosions – and if you’re not prepared, there’s a coffin just your size.
We are daredevils here, tempting fate for fleeting moments of perfection that inevitably scatter in a muffled hush into the jungle around us.
That is why we come here, after all, again and again, when friends and family beg us to stay inside and watch the movie, when they ask us for help in their gardens. It is our nature.
We are the all-devoted samurai; we are the dreamers of dreams. This is our hell, our ever-rising summit, and our playground in which we find ourselves alive.
Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry
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