Freedom Defined

There is something so very American about those buildings that break the sky. Something American about holding a heavy axe and hefting it into the sides of history. Something American about those million acre forests, so expansive, but now made so bare That you can run your thumb along the curve of the unclothed earth. We have defined that something to be freedom. I was given my axe at fourteen and learned quickly to mechanize. I held manifest destiny between my teeth like a horses bit and piled wild into stacks. Satisfaction would come when I could run my thumb along the curve of my unclothed earth. So I hefted. The years built and calluses clouded. Spine spilled out and knees knotted. Thistles cut skin to scales and ivy quietly tied ankles. There was a desperate fight for the light. A fear and forced madness. I can’t I can’t I can’t let the axe handle slip. Midnight lightlessness buried me blind beneath the undergrowth. The ghosts hefted. I lifted to a sea of stumps and sawdust. Bone and marrow. Wind sick with splinters. The horizon was cleaned. But this quiet completion did not bite with that elusive satisfaction. Just hummed with a hollow deadness as plain and wordless as a million acres of stumps, stretching so far that I faltered my thumb back into my pocket. And at once I knew, I was not magnificent. I left America with self hate and silent descent. And quiet offerings of soil padded around a neon shoot. Here there is rain, and roots relight. And there is a little forgiveness. I left America To where the space dust is still visible. To where the curve can be understood by lying down. To where I farm. To where freedom is a quiet smile unbound.