A Knowing Place

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A place of no place.

A time of no time.

Experiences impossible to share.

            A path along the Quilcene River

            A rock of a height

            To rest my arms, lean

            Into her mossy top.

            She took me in.

            With fear I immersed

Into the soft rock,

            Afraid I would not

Want to return.

I took a friend to show him my rock.

I wanted to tell him my story.

There was no rock.

I returned days later. Alone.

Left offerings of beach agates

On top of my rock.

            I’ve learned to keep spiritual journeys

            To myself. In a forest,

            Five time-zones west of Quilcene,

            A living, pulsating marble wall

Encircled me. By my feet,

Stood a tree, tied with balloons,

            A rainbow fiesta. That wall

Still encloses me, warm. Rock.

Looney Tunes. Rubber-room material.

Nobody would have believed me.

Friends, well-meaning,

Want to explain away Spirit

With Science. I prefer my crazy

To your science.

            So I don’t talk about the warm stone

            I picked up on a cold beach

            On Dungeness Spit, a heart stone.

            Or visiting my dead Grandmother’s

Disappointments to help me forgive her.

Or the folds in time a few of us know

Along roads in Kitsap County.

            Or the shadows that keep me company

            And let me know I’m never alone.

I cannot enter your knowing place

Nor can you enter mine, this place 

Where I know things I cannot know,

Where silence is a thick presence,

Where all my life that ever was and is

And will be resides.    

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