How Are You?

"How are you?"

How am I? How am I?

Will you wait for an answer
or will you walk by grinning
knowing I'm just fine,
just like you, just like him, just like her?
We're all fine.

Good, good, and you?
Good.

"How are you?"

How am I? How am I?

Stand here and listen as I keep your hand in the grip of the shake you meant to release,
as I hold on and answer the question you asked but didn't really mean. . .
You have asked, and I will answer,
I will look you in the eyes and open my heart and my mouth and you will receive an answer,
a piece of me and we will no longer be
strangers bumping politely in the same dark ocean. . .

How am I?

Drink deeply from the wells of life was once the magnetic drumbeat of my soul.

The echoes of the Creator are everywhere, dance accordingly.

Yet other drummers crowded in, other rhythms to move to,

although it was no dance. . .

It was a trance, a shuffling, I became a zombie of the highest order,

craving not the flesh of the living

just content to flail along slowly to the next numbing destination.

Alive, yes, but unaware.

 

How am I?

 

Well that drumbeat has returned. . .

At first an uncertain thump off in the distance

like a clap of thunder from a storm whose rain you may not feel. . .

Thum. Thum.

I took a rest from aimless wandering, a pause from coasting on momentum from memories past

and I turned that ear of the spirit towards that far off call.

Thum. Thum.

A Wind rustling browning leaves, 

An alarm clock long forgotten

waking a weakened sleeper.

I grabbed my pilgrim's compass and found it faithfully pointing still towards

rich soil, high seas, and colors that could paint the gray world alive. 

 

How am I?

 

I am stretching out folded wings for the first time in ages, shaking dust off tools long forgotten and reclaiming paradigms and epiphanies of an eternal vocabulary. . .

restoring mental faculties filed away flippantly by the dictator of real life.

I am allowing the muses and the rainbows to restore the joints of flight and fancy

with their otherworldy magic,

to whisper whimsically the nameless things in my life and make this tin man dance again.

Drink deep from the wells of life.

He is good. And He gives good gifts. 

And they are present in every sparrow, every hair, every breath.

Each joy, each pain, each hope, and each death.

How am I doing?

Oh friend, I am fine.Very fine, thank you very much.

But now I ask:

How are you?

 

Matt O.