I’ll be turning 68 this spring
and still looking for a health wealthy home.
This feels remarkably like a younger traveler’s game,
with less baggage
and furniture
and tools.
Embarrassing
for an ecotherapist
to be so Earth-habitat unrooted.
Not to indulge in self-shaming,
yet my youngest son,
dependent on EarthTribe to support him
because of physical and verbal dysfunction,
is especially threatened
by Dad’s disability
to seek deep and wide root systems
of affiliation
with natural and spiritual neighbors.
My support system
continues with good faith feedback
that every challenge represents opportunities to learn
and doing so keeps us feeling young,
flexible,
even springy,
optimistic.
I wonder how much older I would feel
if I had never left my family farm birthplace
in Michigan
where this nomad epic wandering
was first inspired
to run into young adulthood
on my own two strong legs
and back
and more orthodox mind.
Now more imaginatively stimulated
by heretical thoughts of a well-cushioned rocker
next to a comforting fire,
surrounded by neighbors,
people
and birds,
squirrels
and rabbits,
chipmunks
and woodchucks,
fox
and shy coyotes,
wild turkeys
and horses
and cattle,
sheep
and goats,
mother trees
and lilac bushes,
a blue lake
and a green alpine mountain,
a shade speckled rocky river…
And still I search
for compassionate companions
on this daily revolving journey
through Earth’s nutrition nurturing seasons
active and dormant,
light with rain and snow,
sometimes feeling far too fast
and sometimes anciently slow…
And still we search,
my son and I,
for yet another right place to go.
gdill52 