on the migratory patterns of poets

I woke up this morning. Not from a dream, like I had so many times recently, but into one.

Being a severe practitioner of lucid dreaming, I often do not know or care where the line between reality and dreams begins and ends. I try to comport myself in my dreams as I would in real life, and in real life take nothing for granted. You never know.

This morning it came. I knew it would. The call. No, not some ex-lover asking for forgiveness for their lies. Not the spouse of an ex-lover, telling me I'm a dead man walking. Not a bill collector. It didn't come over a metallic box of circuits.

It was the call of home. Not home as most define it, but home. Home. Like a vague remembrance of the smell of cinnamon in the kitchen when your mother is baking. Home. Home. Like the strange stirring when you smell a familiar old perfume...Beautiful, Emeraude, Seven Powers. Home. Home. Home. Your cells know it before you realize it in your head, before your mind registers it, your heart is already quickening. Home.

I got up and looked at my bank account. Just enough money, if I left this morning, to make it to Los Angeles, on fumes. I could take everything I have left after two divorces and three cross-country moves, pile it into my car and go. I'd be kissing the Pacific on Wednesday. Home.

The Santa Ana Winds have passed for this year. I caught their edge when I went to my daughter's wedding. Home. I won't miss them next year, I'll stand at the edge of the high desert and feel my skin being blasted by the sand in the wind as I listen to the creaking windmills. Home.

I am being called home. Home. Home to live? Home. Home to die? Home. Home to love?

I do not know, but the call is unmistakeable and profound and powerful and will only grow in strength until it becomes a constant distraction as long a I face anyway but West. Home. Home. Home.

Just two more vows to keep before I can go.

Home.