COMING HOME

I look up ahead of the dusty path, my boots all worn

My toes peer through the unravelled stitching

On my sweaty socks beneath the scuffed surface of my shoes

I carry a pack too heavy to bear, the straps knotted together

Ripped apart on the last leg of the relentless path

Where the edges were lined with thorny roses stripped bare of their petals

My shoulders stoop forward

The weight of the baggage a burden to my frail body

I lost my way along this dusty path

I took too many wrong turns  

Or maybe it was the right turn; travel this way or that

A fork in the road, choices to make

Perhaps the direction I chose to walk

Was exactly the way I was meant to be going?

Even when I couldn’t find my way

I forged ahead in the direction of the arrow

To places that stripped me naked and cold

In forests and mountain ranges, bridges and holes

Where I tumbled and tripped on roots upheaved

In the belief I was headed the right way

I walked through valleys and climbed mountains too high

I swam across oceans and suffered in harsh highs

Of a summer sun and a winter too cold

Where nothing protected me from the external elements

Or the internal battle of stories too damn hard to live through anymore

I fought off hideous beasts that threatened to swallow me whole in the dark of night

I desperately latched onto branches in hope that their strength would save me

From the quick sand that smothered my boots and drew me down

The branches too weak or unwilling;

They snapped off the trunk and left me alone to wade through the muddy swamp alone

To scramble to higher drier lands

And I did.

I dusted my boots and stitched up my clothes, torn in the eye of the hurricane that swept across my path on an autumnal day

And I found my way to the dusty path

Choosing again, this way or that

I traversed across plains that kissed the horizon

And slept under stars that gently reminded me

I was, in fact, going the right way

This was, in fact, my path

Through twists and turns

Going backwards, at times, and around in circles

Scratching my head wondering, how the hell did I end up back here?

And although I am bruised and broken and messed up

I look beyond the memories once lived upon that dusty track

That carried me weary and silent and lost

To that moment when I looked up and saw that I was not

I saw the oasis when I raised my head

Near the end of the path that ripped me to shreds

And the wind whispered softly, ‘One foot then the next’

So I did what I was told

Allowing the sun on an early Spring morning

To dry up the frost bite that slept with me the night before

And somehow I knew that my boots would stay together for the final moments of the journey

That felt like a war

They would carry me there

They stayed with me through

To where I was going

Where? To where am I going?

The horizon crept closer

The end of the path where the frangipani grows

Its scent luring me in to the moment I could stand

Where the dust washed away and the grass grows proudly

Where my boots are repaired and my pack is empty

Where my clothes are clean and the bruises have faded

Where the scars remind me that I once was broken

Where the sign gives no option, just a proud arrow ahead

So I take those last steps and leave what I carried

For the distance I travelled to end my long journey

To the place on the hill where the sun shines bright

And the breeze reminds me

That the journey was, in fact, right

It took me back there

To the place that I started

In the centre of me

My heart

My home

I once was there, when I came to this land

And I found my way home to where I’d always been.