Compass
Waves crash violently,
nearly forcing me overboard.
I promise no surrender,
desperately in love with control,
in the face of nature’s apathetic glare.
Wearing a mask of ambition,
I seek validation in a race for rats,
losing my humanity, and the best parts of my mind.
I hold a vice-grip around hope,
suffocating all opportunities with a sailors knot,
only to prove that I am “a somebody.”
Hiding behind the facade is the fear that if I build it and they don’t come,
then what?
Maybe be just a nobody?
Shoeless Joe Jackson wouldn’t be the only barefoot man in a field of dreams.
I search the night.
Were it not for the stars, I’d believe that my mind was shut off.
My eyes falling to the top of the lighthouse,
hoping to be found amid countless other ships lost at sea.
I let go,
hopelessly brought to my knees from the downpour of disadvantage.
Genuflecting from pain lifts my spirits.
A phantom takes hold of me,
whispering that the beacon of light comes from within me,
and you,
and we.
Not some building in the night,
or views over the horizon at sunrise.
Our gold isn’t in sunken treasures,
but the beauty of the journey we spend a lifetime journeying to find.
I rise as the gentle breeze carries me to the shores of promised lands that only appears after Faith.
