24

I’m drivin’ down the highway at 65mph

And I’m lookin’ out on the plains, the beautiful Ohio plains

With trees standing solitary in the middle of the vastness

And the sky so blue like the most satisfying drink of water

And the tires are pounding the pavement and my hair is out and

All at once I’m laughing, tears flying, exhilarated to be—just be.

Not like the world is any less painful or that things are any less messed up

Or like somehow I’ve convinced myself that these plains are the escape from it all

Because it all is still here (right here) and everything is still hard

But for now Ima sit with the rhythm of the plains and just be.

 

My spirit is drinking up the joy of pounding on a djembe

And singing with a fullness that fills the car

And I wonder if they’ll pull me over for drummin’ while driving

But I just can’t contain myself and there’s no one around anyway

Just me and a djembe and roads and plains as far as the eye can see

And I laugh because this is beauty and I laugh because this is life

Where my spirit remembers that it is made with the fragility of dust

But also knows that it’s made with the resilience of the earth

That has been pounding beats for millennia

And I remember that I will continue on and we will continue on

And our song is not yet done.

 

You know me all too well because you gifted the pulsing warm sun

And the expansive plains and the whisper of a breeze on my face

And the djembe in the car

And the narrow footpath between the trees that led down to the surprise river

Where you whispered the most intimate of belongings to my soul

And at the river’s edge among the rocks I laughed as I cried because you know me

And I laughed as I cried because you haven’t forgotten the song of my soul

And I laughed as I cried because the you are the water that draws me into knowing

That being is the cultivating of resilience

And our song is not yet done.