Overtaken

I am at home…
I walk through the silent house
the big silent house
full with your life, your stuff.
With your none too silent dogs
and ever watchful cats.
Although the dogs right now lounge quietly,
casting furtive glances
at this not so strange stranger,
their eyebrows arc in alternating reflexes
with each new scent coming to their noses.
The cats are almost always quiet,
yet they too offer cat curious glances,
feigned indifference
to my near naked torso before them.
A torso that makes slow
but meticulous pathways through your space,
gazing, touching, pausing
breathing it all — all of it in.
It’s not as if I have time for this,
not as if hitting terminal velocity in life
wasn’t enough out here on my edge of the universe,
where I inhabit an upside down world, inside out space,
incongruent ways and means a daily gruel.
No, I bought and paid for my ticket,
first class, express jet service.
I think it must look like I’m hooked on speed,
or complexity, or on an adrenaline rush,
but that just isn’t the case.
I also know the sensation of toes in cool water,
wetness enfolding me way down there,
so far away from my Central Nervous System
that they seem sometimes not to belong at all.
The Central Nervous System, hmmm,
those words remind me
of one of the plethora of new cable channels.
“Tonight on CNS, Mike proudly presents, ‘Toes in Cool Water’”
But I digress…
In this cacophony of choices,
this information age of unnatural selection
I am all things to all people,
pulled apart muscle fiber by muscle fiber,
and rebuilt by the strength of my own hand
and eye
and heart.
There is so little room for error
and so much to be lost…
speed and confidence seem like my only allies…
but here I stop,
stoop to run my hands over burnished wood,
a hand hewn trough,
ancient,
weathered,
filled with dog toys to overflowing,
their collective incongruity not lost on me
counterpoint to my own incongruous ways…
I am at home…
my overheated,
over burdened,
over taxed,
over stressed vehicle is parked in the cooling shade,
far from the fast lane.
Light through filtered green ambles playfully
across walls that seem to enfold rather than enclose.
Curious things fit into curious places,
the effect appealing.
And for the moment
I lose myself to the impression of things,
their textures,
tastes,
smells,
wash over me
as if I were the toes in cool water,
as if I were the nose

smelling the fragrance of the rose.
I did not expect it.
I did not plan for it.
I neither called for it nor
did I hold it at bay
but here it is nonetheless.
The universe
in it’s own good time
offers up what is needed….
a place of haven, a nurturer of souls…
When I am here and not here.
When I am with you and not with you,
I am overtaken.
I am at home.