befriended the places along my path. I shared a passionate

discourse, an animated conversation with each of them. We

embraced, we flowed into, over and through one another, these

places along my path, the path, and I. I sang to them...

they sang through me.

I remember stopping on a stone bridge over Minnehaha creek.

I drummed and I sang of the enchanted place where we stood.

I saw the water rising, falling, the trees springing forth

in the new life of spring, growing flush with the life of

the sun, thick with the leaves of summer, drawing inward as

the light wanes toward autumn, leaves drying and crackling

underfoot. I saw the ice spread over the stream, snow drifting

among the bare trunks as the life of the woods dreams within

the warm earth, safe beneath the blanketing shroud.

Standing, unchanging, immovable is the bridge, a place of

stillness amongst this clamor, an outpost of earth amid the

ever-changing mantle of life.

Again I stood within a clearing along the path. I saw with

its eyes, eyes that look out into the depth of the stars

from within the womb of the woods, bathed in holy light,

light that has journeyed from forever with no purpose but to

illumine this one small, perfect place. This is a paradise...

a place where we rest along the path, a place of reflection,

of community. Before ever we gathered around the fire, we came

here and felt the warmth of starlight on our faces.

Memories of who I am, of who I have been...who I have chosen to be,

carried on the silver light, enter my eyes and fill me to overflowing.

The doors that guard these old selves sway lazily on their hinges,

their inmates freed to stretch these legs again, to walk this path and

speak once more with tongue, lips and breath of passion.