Zagorka

The zagorka is wild, but there is a microcosm of earth, which offers it protection above and below.  It is, as we are, nestled in between the looming white and brown mountains and independent blue clouds and sky, and the earth below - and below - and below.  Seeds of ground, of herb and rocks, which built modern life from ancient life, and roads which are born of recent machines are still, stoic with minimal needs.  The rocks are a blanket over dry and then rich soil, reams of creatures which live in and around her surface, smooth and inviting, motherly and wild.  

The men have planted some land mines and have tried to remove the tops of her homes but she stands still, and defiantly turns her head away from the engines that roar for her, when those engines lack fire and only know air and cement.  She prefers to take her levels inward, into the deepest of vistas and out again, laced with her wild ways to the wind and the sea, which surrounds, and is always moving, even in stillness it advertises to the rest.  When you stand above her, you can peer below to the finest constructions of tall paintings made into your world; when you think you can control her, out she runs again, pushing her way back to you and up your backside, making her way into your ways and not apologizing for it.  But, then, you will find her wilds laced with cherry and olive trees, and vineyards which carry you through to the thinking onto your head which you call imagining.  

She is the blanket of moist, warm grasses and the circling dogs roam her like their own, and is the lap for the weary head to regenerate itself -- that inexplicable feeling of waking up from a much needed sleep on her earth, the wind dancing about your feet, the drop just out of frame, down to her other, equally as stubborn, skies which simply exist for you to look upon.  To see yourself in her crystal clear waters.  She is everything about you, secrets all, but not hidden, all that she is she has always been.  I wake up from her moonshine dirt with the scent in my skin, the pallour of fullness making offerings to my mouth and steps.  

The zagorka is the untamable place, winds making gladitorial battles and animalistic lust games and passion plays and childrens tales all at once, beneath an understanding, open and starred sky.  The sun warms my ways and my touch is grand, because she has showed me that I am her wildness equally, and wildness contained in every presence, the moments I eat birth and death like stray flowers worn in my hair, rocks in my bag and a constant barely drunk soul which guides me on with curiosity, and a pounding heart.  The zagorka runs the highways in my veins and the new skin beneath my feet.  Once awakened, she will never sleep again, and there is no need to be afraid of her anymore.  She lives to love what she recognizes as her own, to shield and retreat, to open her eyes bright to me.  

Her mantle is digested, my father is racing the moon above it all, and my heart is made fragrant and expanding, my touch the nexus of the adjoining universes which I can yield to, because I do not have to yield.  I am her contradiction and spin around the rocky, seamless and downward/upward coastal measures without care of how far I go...as I am always looking out from inside the contained wilds of her spellbound eyes.  I am zagorka.  I am home.

M. Lucia