Where the Road Drops Down

I

When I was a younger man,

I had a recurring nightmare.

*

I would be driving on a long bridge

suspended over water,

*

and when I crested a hill

and began my descent

*

I saw the bridge was unfinished.

The road just…ended.

*

No time to brake, no time to stop,

just a horrid, helpless free fall,

*

watching the green water of the bay

and my impending demise

*

grow ever closer.

*

Before the impact, I would awaken,

panicked, fighting for breath,

*

feeling the water invading my lungs.

It would take me a moment to recover,

*

remember I was on dry land,

and it was only a dream.

II

I’ve got 65 cycles around the sun today,

and the meaning of those dreams has

*

changed over time, since I began my

healing transformation four years ago.

*

As I’ve learned to feel what

I’d kept myself from feeling

*

for so long,

*

surmised that shame is a bastard child

of the perfectionist fallacy,

*

come to recognize the reality that

I am an eternal soul living a human experience,

*

I have learned to transmute

that shame into wisdom.

*

I am no longer that young man,

in more ways than one.

*

My body has regenerated itself

countless times,

*

cell by cell, piece by beautiful piece,

to bring me to this holy present moment.

III

The dream is different now.

I’m still propelled forward,

*

still behind the wheel, but

earthbound, on an empty Texas

*

country road at dusk, rounding a bend

at the top of a hill, a copse of trees overhanging

*

the pavement.

*

And in that place where

the road drops down into darkness,

*

where I lose the pavement and fly

off into the Nothing,

*

I smile and let loose of the wheel,

knowing that

*

I

will

soar.