Black Sheep of the Fold

I Crept like the ancients
Across the distended pathway
Pitched and narrowed by bracken
And fear
Of content & self importance
Of rebellion & childlike curiosity
My delicate skin covered in a thick hide of years earned
Of rings of celestial mysteries
Running the circumference of my eyes
Lost to my own kind
A pioneer of peerless treasure
Bones aching from the dust of a million tears
Crusted & fallen to heaps in this structure of mine, forever in the forest of wandering
But I sense this vortex has sprung a new branch of promise
My nose smells the blossom of the angelic
Here the Shepherd finds me again
Just as I run the ring of miles one last time
Like the thousands of times before it
Constantly bringing me back
Enfolding
Inwardly old
But this is His youth
And His beauty and His open fields of glorious sun
The Rays Of God
Find me through the spidery clouds of deep gray & dense caulifloria
I am held
And I am led
Back through the foliage of yesterday’s
Of the shadows of doubt
Of the knobby elbows of vain musing
We find the clearing
And again I am Home
Just a Black Sheep Of The Fold
Returned
A Prodigal of sorts
A peacock of pride
But loved regardless of the imperfections
Loved especially for the blemishes
The same heart
The same blood
The same mind
The same soul.