THE PILGRIM WITHIN
The alarm didn’t sound.
Nothing bit or ran across my body,
but my eyes opened.
I couldn’t see the clock,
too much cluttered the dresser.
It was still black out,
but I was awake,
more awake than I could ever remember being.
The sheets were kicked to the yellow-green linoleum
of my tiny trailer floor,
and I was upside down.
I showered, dressed, and stepped onto the porch.
Looking out across
the rectangular lots of tin homes,
I could still see some of the fading stars and airplanes
flashing off into the distance.
The trashcans were full,
so I dragged them to the curb.
I usually miss the garbage men,
but I’d catch them today.
I reached down and took up a scrap 2X2 to fend off dogs
and strolled to the end
of the block to a cemetery.
I’d never walked there before.
My father and I would walk by old graves reading
tombstone dates and inscriptions
when I was a young boy,
and we did our best to walk between them.
It’s an old cemetery
with graves dating back to the late 1800’s
and the most beautiful drooping cedar trees I’d ever seen.
For awhile, I walked and read,
admired men of wars, and sadly noticed children
that had not lived long.
I found a cracked concrete bench in a dark cluster of cedars.
Someone had propped it
so half was flat and I sat there,
tapping my stick on the other half.

 The evil lay next to the saints.
All kinds from plot to plot, and so many stories.
A garden planted with the dead.
But it didn’t feel like death around me. Felt like peace.
Plato said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
I’m ready for the end of war:
the war inside,
loneliness,
self-abuse.
Peace beneath cedar trees is very satisfying.
If I could create my life moment to moment,
become the vision
and soak the wonder of the present,
I could glow from the inside.
Laughter would no longer be a sedative,
but wild dances from a happy soul.
Sparrows sang in the branches above me,
and when I looked to see
there was the sun,
boiling and exploding at the center of our solar system.
I felt clean among the dead.
When I stood, something ran into the underbrush and disappeared.
The devil maybe
or an angel who had seen me through?
I took my walking staff and left the sweet smell of the trees,
following stones, reading.
I dusted grass and leaves from one
and inscribed was “God Bless Him. Our Amazing Grace”
I don’t know why,
but I began to sing.
“. . . to save a wretch like me. . . .”
I was a wretch
with barely a roof and food to keep me hungry.
Someday, I told myself. Someday, life will be more
than leftovers.
I dropped my head, so no one could see
and I wept,
walking back past the junk lots
back into the trailer park,
singing softly to myself
as I went.