A Thousand Words

Our paths crossed again

You kept your distance; you smiled politely enough, and exchanged the usual customary pleasantries with me.

We exchanged names, we talked about the weather, we shared a laugh or two. Precisely two, in fact. We scratched each other’s surface, and made careful note of our first impressions upon the fragile, fickle slate of memory.

After a short while, we parted. We said we would keep in touch; and maybe we will. We both doubt it, though. It always seems to happen that way, doesn’t it?

You say I don’t know you.

You’ve always said that.

You say that I could never understand you; your feelings are beyond my reach; you are alone, an island, a solitary wanderer, only to be seen in passing, never to be understood; you are too unique, your soul is too unlike mine and always will be; and no matter who or what I think I am, I could never possibly know you.

Then can I say that you might know me?

Even if I never know your name — even if I am never made aware of your existence — look inside yourself, and you just might know me.

If you have ever smiled at your own humanity — then you know me.

If you have ever glimpsed the ocean for a moment as if you have stared at it for a thousand years — then you know me.

If you have ever closed your eyes and traced your tongue along the edge of the cosmos...

or if you have ever seen the fingerprint of God in the pattern of a leaf...

or if you have ever heard laughter between the notes of Beethoven’s Ninth...

or if you have ever heard violins echoing out of an abandoned building...

or if you have ever heard a poem caught inside the low rumbling wail of a train...

or if you have ever felt Atlantis between your fingertips in a handful of sand...

or if you have ever felt the beat of a butterfly’s wings as it stirs the air a hundred feet above the Amazon...

or if you have ever seen a trembling hand reaching out of the old black-and-white photo of your great-grandparents...

or if you have ever laid flat on the ground and felt the Earth carrying you just as your mother or father carried you when you were an infant...

or if you have ever looked into a cup of coffee and stared past the edge of forever...

or if you have ever secretly laid your fingertips upon a Van Gogh in a museum and felt the ecstacy of the saints...

or if you have ever moved with a winter wind as if dancing a tango in a Spanish ballroom...

or if moments have ever wrapped themselves around you like fire around a cup of cool water...


or if you have ever thought of it first or said it too late...
or if you have ever heard the soft, conspiratorial murmur between the winds...

or if you have ever believed paradise to be the absence of fear...

or if you have ever believed in your heart something your mind could not accept...

or if you have ever seen in a child’s face a look that says “I’ve got this whole life thing all figured out”...

or if you have ever asked yourself a question that you didn’t really want the answer to...

or if you have ever danced to music that only you could hear...

or if you have ever seen, etched in small print somewhere in a blan
ket of garden dust, detailed instructions on the secret procedure of emerging from a cocoon...

or if you have ever seen staircases opening up in the ground and closing again in the ground inside your shadow, between the casual blinking of your eyes...

or if your own emotions have ever taken shape before you in a long dark night of the soul, to walk in slow circles around you and drive a sword into your side...

or if you have ever touched a boy’s hand and felt within him the divine pulse of the heavens quickening his blood and stretching his bones slowly towards the sun, as if to bring him closer to its fire...

or if you have ever turned fitfully for hours in your sleep while unable to escape the brief but unerasable memory of the girl with brown eyes and black hair who looked at you from across the room for only a moment in just the right way to make you think she had a secret to tell you...

or if you have ever come upon the face of a pale, long-forgotten god sleeping underneath the surface of the waters, waiting five thousand years to proclaim — to anyone who will listen — that there was more truth in the myths and legends than the world has yet discovered...

or if you have ever heard the soul whom you most love in all the world (whether or not you have ever met) calling to you across a thousand miles, whispering a song in a secret language that only the two of you will ever understand, with words that you can only hear in the hollow of your bones...

or if you have ever felt inside your skin the slow eternal uncoiling of the thread binding you to the primal ancestor, loosening the grip with a light tug across a thousand ages to give you a little slack...

or if the night has ever sang to you as if a choir were crammed into its every breath...

or if you have ever felt yourself large enough to brush against hell, or small enough to fit inside heaven...

or if you have ever seen a thousand words inside a silence...

...then hello, how are you, it’s good to see you again.