Witness

In just a few days, I have fallen just one step behind you, just a heartbeat away from you, just a moment of silence removed. And in that space the cattail turned and the bud broke, and things that were born went unwitnessed.

While I wasn’t looking the smallest gap between us widened, and you’ve begun to feel impossible to reach. You’ve returned to place I could never be; too far away to hear you, you become a yearning, and sorrow, a hymn to the past – you live beyond all congregation, and belong to the lonely place where the grass is always greener, the bar is always higher, the way is unattainable, if true. While I wasn’t looking, somehow the distance between us grew as natural as the sky and the wingless bird — as the mountaintop and the moon.

I have missed you, and am reminded that the closer I am to you, the less you appear to be god. The closer I am to you, the more you become the ordinary miracle of magnolias and men – just a part of my morning walk to the pond, and the egret, and the owl, and the crinkles in the corners of my eyes. While I was away, I didn’t forget you were holy and here — I only forgot I was, too. I am grateful you waited, and grateful to be home.