Ride

June 2006

RIDE

By Scott Murphy & Jeff Ludlum

A space between coming and going, light and dark
An inch, a mile wide, bathed in the knowing gaze of a sage, smudged by the dirty hands of a blind cripple groping for truth.
He clenches the past like a child, but knows his stand lies beyond
Around the bend in the road, over the grassy knoll, the massive wall that rises before him, a hundred feet high and ten deep.
Impenetrable to lesser men.
At his best he can see every move played out, as before his pawn shifts from its home square, through to checkmate,
From a knightly oracle to a fated vision he's seen a thousand times. And only now
Does he realize he's been on the wrong path for countless days, the quest demanding that he start anew to find the proper way.
Frost had warned him of the path well trodden, of well manicured and well mannered ways
Only now does he realize all the footprints are pointing the opposite direction, shoes warn backward to confuse, confound, create the inner chaos that now swirls in his mind.

"Why! Oh why", he shouts to the silence of the wind. His voice is all that he can be sure of and even then it comes with nothing but questions
"There's the rub," he recalls reading.
Again, the past, the goddamn past! He can't shake it
and yet the thousand times he's found himself in this circumstance offer a glimmer, a fleck of silent calm in the cacophony,
Just enough to cling to as he begins to climbs this massive wall
The calm knowing melts over his mind, like a scoop of vanilla in the mid-day sun.
Only to be licked off by the sage's midwife with breasts like thunder and horse straddling legs
As she gallops off licking her lips, our hero is reminded of the timeless lesson, "Sometimes all you can do is hold on tight with both hands and enjoy the ride."
Reminded, of course, of the lithesome form of Meryl Streep upon a thundering herd of appaloosa. Ride indeed!
Somewhere in the darkness he hears the faintest of sounds, somewhere "Mustang Sally" is playing on an old, crackling radio; he has to chuckle to himself as he continues his climb.

Laughter and hope, sex and sin, gravel and silky smooth skin, his past and his future, scars and gentle kiss that heals even the deepest wounds
The falls don't really even hurt anymore, it's the notion he sometimes has that he should be having an easier time of it by now that fucks him up.
It is when he lets go, when he trusts, himself, his fears fall away, tumbling and shattering below him
And over time that's become enough to fortify him during the journey, nearly two score that he's trod this earth.
Now, feeling more like the earth than the steps that trod upon it
Solid, nourished, timeless, dirt that never dies.
Soil that sops up the rain, feeds the seeds, encases the roots and seeps deep into the cracks of the blind cripple groping for truth
And if one took a moment to look closely, behind his wayfarers, they might catch the wink of the eye-less socket,
A toothless chuckle
Better to be on the journey called life than food for worms buried deep in the solid, timeless dirt.