The Long Return

It began in the rain.
Not a storm, just the steady falling
that softens the edges of things.

A coat damp at the shoulders.
A narrow door, easy to miss.
Inside, the simple wood of a bench.

I knelt
without knowing why.

There was no weight to it.
No gold, no smoke, no tallying of wrongs.
Only a kind of breathing
that did not ask to be held.

Something moved—
not seen, but known—
as wind moves through trees
you cannot quite name.

And then, as happens,
I went away.

I followed the bright rooms,
the painted faces that never blink,
the careful words,
the small divisions of the soul.

I learned to measure.
To count.
To keep the quiet books of error.

I thought this was devotion.

But the body remembers otherwise.
The body keeps calling.

Years passed.
Salt, work, the ordinary abrasions of living.
Maps folded and put away.
Voices that once seemed final
growing faint.

And still—
not lost.

Only turning.

Back to the rain again.
Back to stone, washed clean
by what falls freely from the sky.

Back to a room
where nothing is required
but attention.

A table.
A bowl of water.
The shared sound of voices
not trying to prove anything.

Not a trial.
Not a defense.

A field opening.

A place where you can stand
without choosing
between what is given
and what is felt.

Here, the circle does not close.
It widens.

Bread on the table.
Enough.

And the spirit—
not contained,
not counted—

but moving,
as it always has,
through everything.