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
