I traveled so far, the clouds at my back, the wind at my feet, her hair in my eyes. I had forgotten how blinding the moonlight could be. The trees were ants beneath the waves of atmosphere. I had fared so far this night, a feather on the wind, blowing, flowing, glowing. I trapped a shimmer of light in a glass to guide our way. It shimmered until morning as the soft rain drenched me, she was no shelter from the dawn. I turned to look back home and could still see a thousand miles away, my mother in her bed, my father in the woodshed.

Had I gone off course? Did she know where she was going? I surely didn’t. I remained, on either side was death, forward was life. I remember being a babe in the long grass. She was once the snake, slithering beside me in crib. She knew what she brought, her mouth bore no good will. Her fangs were imminent, she was death eternal.

The memory slipped as quickly as it had appeared, lost beneath the twilight of morning. That desolation, that magic, that cold remembrance of time’s destruction of all things good. I awoke suddenly, we were falling, falling from the heavens from which we had been soaring a moment earlier. I tried to wake her but she would not open her eyes. Her hair blurred in my sight. My heart was above me, all I could hear was the loud swish of the air around as we descended.

As we neared ground she suddenly awoke. My life was before me and then beneath and behind in one quick motion. We regained speed, blowing past the flowers that adorned the edge of the cliff by the sea. What a long path to the glory of God, how winding the roads, how narrow the gate, I barely fit. His footsteps are the pails of wind that I soar, his houses, the billowing heavens. He called me to himself long ago and I have been traveling on high all my days.

I grow weary yet I am only a passenger. His voice was so soft and faint yet I could not rid myself of it. I had to follow where it led. Through craggy cliffs and unsteady bridges and yet I remained safe despite doom on either side. He guides me now, graciously, perfectly, through the waters, through the depths, to hell and back, he guides me. My life shall be of consequence to him, my breath an exaltation of his life. I take the salty air , the misty shores, I am the traveler, I am the man without a name, the boy without a home, death without dying, a tree still growing, the flower in the wind.

J. M. Prater