by LJ Frank

My heartbeats are measured…

 I suspect my heart only has so many beats to my life’s song. I taste the moment to extend the quality of that measure with food, drink and exercise as desired ingredients.

To excite the minute I’ve sought the exotic grace of my passion’s want, the sensuality of humor, naked of labels and aware that no worthy heart is pure. Drama free is a reductive expression of experience to minimize a personal grief or the blurred meaning of a perception.  

I’ve voyaged vast oceans on a sailing ship or two, trekked a few continents on foot, riding a motorcycle and aboard a train, bus or plane, and have asked a stranger over a pint of ale, “what do you think the meaning is?”

 I immersed myself to some degree in world cultures, visited sacred dwellings and briefly indulged myself in a monastery life and found a monk can have the dramedy of too much silence, though some retreats have an intercom device with monotone quotes from a past figure of reverence and the monks while wearing only a tunic over their soul are attune to their sore knees and asses, if without a cushion.

 So then on a recent day I sat behind the steering wheel of my small car and drove across an increasingly climate troubled landscape experiencing a few pleasures and wanting something different and as chance would have it, found myself in the midst of a storm and an old adage to be true – a thing is not so bad that it couldn’t get worse so best enjoy the hour for what and where it is.

 And as I made my way through a brief fog of rain I shifted gears riding over the next ridge, now amid an off and on again wet sunshine, while listening to a song fading in the background, my all-season tires found their rhythm crossing the expansion joins of the pavement and then like the soft fragrant breeze one smells after the storm I heard a whisper, “the spirit of the Muse you seek has been here all along, waiting for you to see.”