נָתַתִּי רוּחִי בְּךָ וְאֶת חַיֶּית

I thought today about simplicity.

How beautiful it is that there are people in this world
who ask for nothing more than this
one person
who will choose them with enough strength
to stay.

And yet how everything complicates,
twists into fog,
one great haze of smoke.

But in truth,
it all shrinks and condenses
into a single, lonely point
a deep, inner will:

to be master of reality
and slave to the process,
to become meaning
inside a world.

A world of mechanics and machines.

When two bodies learn
to collide or to beware,
to move toward each other or away,
always in motion or in stillness
guiding lines.

Into the crowd of the most congested cities,
searching for the blue parking space,
anything but red.

Standing at the stop line
until the colors change.

Calculated to be straight or direct,
to stay right with the rules
or cheat a little, slip through the sides.

Odds versus risks.
Automatic or manual.

Intersections of choice
right, left, or straight into meaning.

The world hands us a tin can with wheels
so we can feel like we’re everywhere,
and call that freedom.

And gives weight to the engineering of time
just to arrive on time

while the real home
was never four walls and a window.

The real home lives inside the ribcage,
beating quietly within.