Two States and A Half Piece

The mind chews on itself. Too many people ask me what is next, and for five hundred miles I have ruminated on that. For a long time I thought that I had such a long time so I wouldn't put post walking living to mind. The elk came down to water. The bear tore my food sack. Mallards followed me around my fire begging for Grape Nuts. Still I pick up what I put down. Maybe the soles of my feet are rounded for a reason; always moving into and out of form and function. Surely I will roost, write, soak until two hot layers or trail wish for the drain out. Settle? The knives I carry are way to expensive...especially at the rate the road takes them yet I persist. Somewhere in my old life I have several insanely expensive knives growing older, but they are not my knives. They have no stories. They haven't even cut my hand skinning a bear. They have not been palmed moving through cities back street dim when the thugs rooted me into a church. They have carved no spoons, made no snares, served no grouse or held buffalo fat in their seams. I am no good in the settlement of 9-5. Brass bells on my cart chime to bears on the roadside feeding on one of the roadkill elk I pass. This pulls me back. When I was three years old and before I knew of years the poor would come to our hillside in Peru just up from the creek. They came in rounded campers, silver canned hams, and shakey campers that I am sure shouldn't have rolled at all. They came to a relative next door. No, I knew they came to me. They came to fire; to sitting in circles where I was passed from lap to lap just like the instruments they played. My one leg was a cast to the hip so I was just in my underwear passed under moonlight gently, always movement, always music. I can smell those smells still, fires from townless people far away, sweet pipes making apples over my head and I want to be there under their hair, their spinning perfume of laughter drunk on summer new and winter loping. Many times I have lived under big roofs but I spoil, grow rancid. People always laugh at how I always have to point out an Airstream rolling down the highway, especially a classic. They see an old camper. I am looking at the people that held me up under moving skies and fiddles bowed in and out of the darkness. I am seeing travelers and I hear music healing in my legs. I have been the grasshopper and the ant and winter is coming.