The sun had newly spilled through the film-haze, cascading down the breasts of Brandywine Valley. Almost every other week, I drove myself there as the day rose and walked up the hills connecting Pennsylvania to Delaware, facing North-East. At dawn, more than any other time, wild creatures roamed around openly. Under the thick auroras of large spruces, undisturbed from often hasty wind, lodged native and migrating birds. Early morning, a whimsical symphony filled the air, connecting trees with the rarely planted residences in a way only a well-told, true story can.
My weightless feet strode up a rutted path. I saw sessile silk flowerets burst out then escape the freshly opened pores of earth’s body, rousing from frost, in light. The valley elevated fusing fall pigments. Striking gold, auburn, titian, fawn, flamingo and, canaries reflected new shades, with each time ticking. My heart’s rising warmth enfolded the neckline of the sky drawing, into its grown irises, the distance.
I saw myself at the highest of the first arable. My eyes bloomed then withered at the sight of lucent shoulder-locked hills dancing from side to side the crimson sky. The ups and downs of the trail resembled a roller coaster. Groves on each part appeared full-bodied or not at all as the trail waves rose and collapsed. Maple-keys eddied over my head a re-vibrating breeze, embracing the fullness of seedling pods, summer had become.
I branched out of the main path and ran amply ahead the trail to the next nerve ending. Along the trail’s side, the slender body of the road seemed as if it had been rendered asunder by its gleaming yellow meander. When I looked at it from atop, in it, I saw the two ways of my journey. I saw the two separate tongues sharing one body, traveling together.
Tired of pacing so fast, having walked those trails fall after summer before realizing I had arrived, I slowed down-sheaf bundles of various weights and lengths laid over the bumpy belly of the hill right before me. Where I last stopped to catch my breath, freshly harvested crops were collected. To my right, the full stock pipes emitted the finite puffs of aging roots. The laden manure decay tenderized under my hiking boots letting go of body form, dissolving in rhyming whiffs. The loud honk of a dark geese-cloud appearing in air-plane formation startled the quotidian routine of roaming dear more than once. Somewhere along the way, I scented the memory of fermented dairy, waisted. Dehydrating sticks and branches caught up the hem of my house-dress pulled its bright-olive threads, forming airway streams beneath spontaneous reds and violets. Friendly outreaching shrubs, unlocked with their thorns, meteoric springs, red-brook-falls across my hill and ankle.
I could see from where I last paused the crescent of the covered Smith-Bridge far west of the urging river-body. East, the ground pearled down the Dee mansion following the bushy red tail of the foxy road, slipping into the secluded and private beauty of the wilderness. Once up there, I saw a barn swallow peek its sharp pointy beak out of a tall pine nest, awakened from the cold current. Seized at that moment was the last of flashbacks…the fiery views of a captivating riviera, its Neptunian sundown, the un-regrettable attrition of pain and love, past. I turned over its lingering twilight: unbearable hurt grew from holding my breath. I felt a perpetual uprising of core meltdown erupt over my chest, there settling the weight of a mountain, soaking up the emerald gulf waters. I felt the present rise, completing my eyes, immersing its spring-tender foliage sprays over my being, like fresh ink on newfound paper.
Unfolding the lengths of my sleeves, I bent down gently to let my heart roll over thinning grass, then naturally chased it.
*This short lyrical fragment is about poetry’s inner struggle as it takes shape, thinking in two languages, continuously switching. It is also about realizing to have outgrown the heartache of a forewent past and fully embracing the present. One wants to ultimately write in the language that one feels it best captures their thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
Nga: SHPRESA YMERAJ
