Anam Cara | A Selection from Oak Wise

 

 

Anam Cara

by L.M. Browning

 

 

I.

Binary

The concurrent Otherworld;

the parallel self

and the missing yet ever-present other.

The answers that are simple

yet beyond comprehension.

You―the arcane other―

the one at the center of the mysteries.

You―the first walker between worlds.

You are like my living journal…

at the end of the day,

instead of writing out each thought

I impart them to you.

You are like my shadow,

always there,

just rarely noticed.

Have you always been there?

Did you float with me

while I was in the womb.

Like twin souls

that would always live together

―one of flesh and one in spirit.

…One dwelling in each half of the world

―ever-beside each other―

yet divided by a veil.

During those months while I developing

was I connected to you

through some other unseen umbilical

just as I was connected to my mother?

I was.

And the umbilical is there still;

running from my soul to yours―

you sustaining me

and I nourishing you.

—

The sympathetic page

has always been willing to accept my burden―

allowing me to pour forth

the maddening recollections of the horrors seen

and the morose eulogies given for dreams

that died before they lived.

My truest friends

have been the bound leaves,

yet how I long to pour forth myself

into something that breathes, that thinks, that feels

and so can reply.

You, out of all others,

are the one I have told the most to.

I could hear your voice when I was a child

yet as I aged I seemed to grow deaf.

I reach for you,

not because I can sense nor see you

but because I simply remember

that you are always there.

Yet what if that memory likewise fades with time

and there comes a day

when I no longer know that you exist,

would you emerge to remind me?

Would you find a way to cross between worlds,

so to save me from my dementia?

In the womb we may have been one

yet since my birth into this world

the memories have dulled.

Throughout this life I have never been able

to fully recall your face nor your name.

Some part of me still recalls that you exist

yet I have few reminders.

So, if one day the receding line of memory

reaches that part of me that knows you live,

what will become of us?

What would I be without you?

What good is a twin without its other?

Ever forlorn and bereaved.

Ever floundering―left adrift

without the anchor of its other half.

Ever incoherent

without the other to translate its meaning.

If I forget you,

I will have forgotten myself.

…I will have lost the half of myself,

wherein my identity is held.

—

You live in your half of this world and I in mine

and within the harboring inlet of our dreams we meet,

to commune together as we once did within the womb.

Parallel lives,

living in concurrent worlds…

loved ones always together yet forever apart.

When shall the reunion take place?

Do not attempt to crossover

into this half of the world;

for I have explored it to its very ends

and it is a forsaken place

where only survival, and not life, is possible.

Come―rustle the curtain;

let me see the outline of your hand come forth

amidst the partition of invisible satin.

Direct me to the place where the panels meet

that I might slip between the thin opening

and we ―the two―

may again become one.

II.

The counterbalance holding my mind sane

does not lie within my body

but within your presence.

If I set out right now,

vowing not to stop

until I had found my place of belonging

would these peeling boots

ever be able to be taken off?

If I said that I would not sleep

until I could lie down beside you

would you leave me to fumble through life,

until at last I collapse?

If I said I would not eat

unless it was at your table

would I be left to waste away?

Or, seeing my devotion to you,

would you put down what you are working

on and come for me.

Have you not heard me stumbling behind you,

following that winding path you take throughout the ages?

Have you not heard the ruckus I have made

in my clumsy and desperate search for you?

Breathless, I thought I saw you move

amongst the shifting reeds…

I glanced no form of flesh or fur

yet I saw some shapeless figure rushed through them―

parting them as they made a path.

…was it you?

I walk against the wind, towards you,

through the wake that you leave

as you move through this world.

Will I ever catch up to you

or am I damned to never close the distance?

III.

My memories of us exist now

as dreams that I do not realize are real.

Pictures of places that I believe are imagined;

for I do not remember

that they are memories of areas I once dwelt in,

in lives gone by.

That life I lead with you

is faded and fragmented,

incoherent and unconscious.

The lullabies you sung to me in the womb

exist now only as melodies of unknown origin

―tunes I hum to myself

yet know not from where I learned them.

Yet if I made my way to that sanctuary

that is beyond this modern plane

would I find you there?

Is it upon that land that you have dwelt in wait?

Is it from those shores

that you have spoken to me?

Is it from the tops of those hills

that you have watched me?

Is it in that flourishing valley

that you have made a home for us?

…And within the window of that house

have kept a candle lit to guide me home?

Keep talking my love

…keep that candle in the window;

for I am groping through the darkness of despair

trying to find you

…trying to make it home.

Go and rouse the boatman;

for I have made it to the borderlands

and can go no further without your help.

- Excerpt from Oak Wise: Poetry Exploring an Ecological Faith

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Orginal Artwork: © L.M. Browning