RUME

        How long have you been watching?
        - Long enough to see the digital distortion. Why do you ask?
        The audio programme seems to be scrambled.
        - Is there a replacement channel?
        No. Just wind batting the palms along the street, the occasional spats of rain while blank screens leave me wondering if I will ever get back on the horse again.
        - I didn’t know you rode.
        I was being figurative.
        - Did you mean to say back on the cart, because you had fallen off?

       I am in an empty room. A painting of an empty row boat without oars hangs on the wall. The boat is moored in shallow water without a tether. It just sits there. Three palm fronds dip into the picture from the top left corner, hills across the bay beyond. The water is clear.
        I am unclear. A haze. Fog through the window.
        Ambivalence draining motivation.
        Jumping isn’t an option. Running isn’t an option. I only have floors and branches, arms and legs,
and reflections on the water.
        Clear, still water.
        There are voices in the wild, and salt on my tongue.
        Conversations down the corridor where light is hiding from the ashes.
 
        Am I my own son?
        The one, who was born again on the side of the ambivalent river; the one, who shed the umbilical cord into the water, rose again washed and fresh, and welcomed the morning sun against retired eyes?
        Time to stop looking
                  into the past;
                  into the future;
        Time to start living, as mindfulness is imparted upon the fabric of existence.

        I am, and is,
        me upon the stones,
        Dreamer who let go.
        Feather on a discerning breeze.

•  11/02/2025, 7:36 pm; Tūranganui-a-Kiwa