Five hours feeling happiness
I have been walking for five hours.
I got off the subway five hours ago.
I kept on walking with the city on my back
Streets becoming tracks
Tracks becoming old dry creeks
Creeks steep
Climbing to the top of one
Then making my way back
Five hours feeling happiness.
Five hours getting numb
Five hours leaving real life down there in the map
Five hours out of frame.
I have been walking for five hours.
Five minutes ago I realized I was coming back.
I began counting my steps.
I stopped humming songs.
I’m sweating no more.
Heavy.
I’m feeling heavy.
I’m crippled.
I stop.
My feet on the dirty ground.
I count to five.
I start crying.
Nobody is around.
I’m alone.
I’m listening to the empty brilliance of my own existence.
I’m feeling little.
I’m alone.
I can’t stop crying.
My bones are cracking down.
The wind keeps swaying me.
The track keeps waiting for me.
I count to five.
I stop crying.
Nobody is around.
I trigger my boots.
Five hours feeling happiness.
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For Gabriel’s bio and more of his poetry go here.
Wilderness Interface Zone 
Yeah–taking pain out into nature so we can feel the fullness and emptiness of it–all of it. I get this. Happiness, too.
I often take my big feelings out where they have room to stretch, these days into my favorite canyon, which place suffers no difficulty accommodating their strength.
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“I began counting my steps.”
So interesting to me, this feeling of being free of care, out in nature, being able to leave things behind, and then… sort of being crushed by it, or awed by it, or not as stong as it… something.
I think I’m going to have to come back a few more times to read this so that I can fully get it. I sense there is a lot in this poem.
I really love the originality of your word choices, the way you put your words together. Kind of stunned by it, actually.
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Thanks for your insights. I really appreciate the connections you’re making. Sarah, thanks so much for your comments, it’s me who is stunned by your comments.
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