No One In Them

You've stood at the start of something and found you were already at the far end of it. You'd run it forward and arrived there more times than you could count. Your feet never moved.
This one stays at the beginning. It looks at the ground you've worn down in your head and never set foot on, and at the one real step in front of you.
It doesn't hurry you anywhere. It asks a single question, and leaves you standing where you actually are.

Transcript

You are standing still. The ground under your feet. Your weight coming down into it. And no motion anywhere in you. You are not going anywhere. For now there is only this. Standing. Held. But the eyes close over it. But the standing be the first fact. Not a breath yet. Not a landscape. Just your own weight. And the ground taking it. Take a slow breath. Let it settle you further down onto your feet. Again. The ground does not ask you to move. It holds you exactly where you are. Now let it open out in front of you. A path. It runs ahead from where you are standing. Out across open ground. And keeps going. Further than you can see. And gone. Look down the length of it. And there on the path ahead, Prince. Footprints pressed into the ground. Running the whole way out. One after another. Study. All the way to where the path disappears. Look how worn they are. Not one set, Pressed once. Gone over and over. Until the ground gave and stayed given. A track beaten deep by a lot of passing. They are yours. You know the stride of them. You know exactly where they go. You made them. Everyone. Not with your feet. In your head. You have gone up that path so many times. Run it forward. Seen the far end. Stood in the place it arrives at. At the going or it. The trail is real. You beat it yourself. But look. There is no one on it. The prints go all the way out. And every one of them is empty. You are not up there. You never went. You are here. At the start of it. And your feet have not moved. Feel that. The one who wore the path down. And the one standing still at the mouth of it. One has been all the way to the end. The other hasn't taken a step. Both you. You have done this a long while. Longer than this path. It is how you stood at the start of most things. Already up ahead. Already living in a place you have not gone. One question. Ask it, And then don't run ahead of it. What ground have you already worn down that you still have not set foot on? The answer is not up the path. Nothing up there is real. Stand at the mouth of it. And let the questions stand with you. Now, The ground right under you. The prints start astride out. Look at where they begin. Not under you. A step ahead. Under your own two feet. The ground is unmarked. Nobody's been there. Not even you. This is the only ground you can push off from. Not the beaten part out ahead. You can't reach that. You were never on. Justice. The unwalked ground, Your weight is on. And there is one step in front of you. Not the whole path. The next place a foot would land. Close enough to touch. On ground, No one's pressed yet. It's small. After the far end you have stood at so often, One step is almost nothing. That's the trade. You set down the far end you keep arriving at. The whole worn length of it. And you get the one real step back. Let the prints stay where they are. Out Ahead. They do not fill in because you looked away from them. They were always going to stay empty until you walked. Only feel that it is there. The one real thing in all of this. Let the path stay out there. It keeps us. Worn or unwalked, It will be where you left it. Come back down into your feet. The real ones, On the real floor. The weight of you. That Niagara actually left this spot. The one step is still in front of you. You do not take it in here. You take it out there. On the ground your life is actually standing on. Let the space around you come back at its own pace. You do not have to reach for it. It is already here. When you are all the way back in the ground you are standing on. Let your eyes open.