Hinterland

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To travel to the hinterland, just once,
is enough for any lifetime.

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To know oneself beyond oneself
and to tread a path that little sense makes
but for the journeying.

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For the journeying alone.

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After all, we are not really built for the hinterland,
though for some that very mismatch
makes it home.

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There to strive against all odds,
self-made yet unimaginable:
to become the very cry of the wolf
in the face of the scattered moon.

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That rough land lies beyond our familiar ways:
it begins at that footfall unsure
when the earth beneath our feet
is no longer known nor even sound.

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When our solid world gives way.

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It begins at that moment when 
our calling diverges from pure sense;
when life's slender torch beckons
us from the ever-cycle
of simple safety,
of bemusing saturation.

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And then that branching from the ordinary that

no reason can broker or placate;
there the boot upon mountain stark,
upon ice that should never know tread-fall.

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There that branching from the ever-cycle,
that tumble upon wilderness thought
and barren feeling,
upon windswept promontory 
where we never meant to be.
That complete breaking with every tomorrow
into a world that demands us here, 
at this footfall,
through terrains uncharted.

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For he fears not tomorrow who is swept
upon the tides of today.

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Of a hinterland waiting,
unfurling to the East, to the West
and the sun.
That hinterland, there to abandon all
upon its subtle threshold.
And there, just once, to hold our own.

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DG