Convocation

I stood in order, having arrived late.
Not late by the clock,
But by the long detour of damage, work,
And the slow revision of belief.

The hall had heard this before.
Brick remembers.
Names are spoken.
Hands are shaken.
Time registers the event
And continues without comment.

I wore the costume of arrival.
The square cap rested where uncertainty
Had rehearsed its arguments for years.
The robe concealed nothing
But implied gravity,
Which is what ceremony does when meaning is thin.

I had come by way of music, archives,
Margins filled with doubt,
Questions that refused applause.
Nothing about this was efficient.
Nothing about it was young.
The mind arrived only after patience
Had exhausted resistance.

Around me stood others,
Each bearing an invisible history
Polished into composure.
We did not look victorious.
We looked complete enough to stop.

Some were absent.
Their absence took up space.
It required no explanation.
Memory arranged itself accordingly.

This was not triumph.
It was recognition.
That time, applied steadily, alters a person.
That attention outlasts faith.
That endurance leaves a residue
Which we agree to call knowledge.

The ritual ended.
The doors opened.
The city waited, indifferent and intact.

I stepped out not renewed
But adjusted.
Less interested in arrival.
More capable of remaining.