A History Of Nothing

Mystical poem written 4-8-25. Dedicated to my late teacher, Anthony Saltana. Hymn To The Dead 5.

Can you follow,
The story up to now?
It’s nothing special,
Just like me

It winds from a harried home,
To gray institution halls,
Always leading me to those,
Abandoned buildings where I slept

But then a mystery unfurled,
In the words of a gray-haired man,
Who rolled into my life,
And set up camp

I learned what I really was,
Only hinted at before,
By the stories of the mother,
And the legend of the absent father

2.
Upon meeting me he was bashful,
But quickly brightened into flowing speech,
Like me, he was in love with language,
And his words beamed with images 

I could not look away from his eyes,
Bright and blue and sure of himself,
In a way that I never really was,
Wise in the ways of street and forest

We would make our way together,
Almost every day of my year and a day,
He would roll and I would walk,
And we would make our rounds

He hid what he was truly doing,
Even as he taught me to do it,
Weaving knots between people,
And places, and spirits, and gods

3.
He taught me what I teach today,
About connections and repair,
About the life within the heart,
That connects to the Spirit

He taught me to seek and serve,
The True, the Beautiful, and Good,
While all the time showing me,
The False, the Ugly, and the Evil

For a year of squats and feedings,
Of endless misunderstood moments,
A year of walking up and down,
The streets of my adopted home 

What can I do in all my Work,
But try to live up to the faith,
He had in me as he spent his time,
In our endless conversation?