Fog blue-black with autumn night as I walk down

The invisible trail traced before me in the dark

My weeks of footprints sinking deeper into the mud as I tread over them again

Again

Joining the silhouettes in the stone room enfolded dark enfolded light

Hidden by candle-shadow and hoods of wrinkled cloth

Joining them in touching my clasped hands to head and lips and chest and

Joining them in kneeling in a unity of silence

 

Silence

Silence thick and physical and wrapped around my ribcage like longing

For home, for time, for mornings like this and their promise of forever

 

In the nothing in the black in the candle-shadow I cannot keep from thinking

Of the place which I left

The place to which each new heartbeat brings me closer

City of asphalt city of brick, city of concrete and headlights shining the way home

To friends and family and old things made new by my monastery mornings,

Old things that were there at our beginnings kept us warm at our beginnings

Made new again.

In my imaginings I open my arms and say oh, my friends, I have learned

So much

 

Breaking silence giving way to whispered courtesies,

Shuffling feet

We separate from each other but the echo of silence binds us

Keeps us part of the same organism

I breathe in

We breathe in

I breathe out alone and step outside.

I am in America again;

The rising sun turns the fog the color of firelight