I am a pilgrim

I am a pilgrim, wandering in lands strange and fair
Treading a new path
Treading paths well paved
Searching for them holy sites, the sacred, the unnamed, and the profane,
Searching for the whole and ripe.
Like a snail, slowly, with home on my back
Searching for the broken, the forgotten, the insane.

Once I was not a pilgrim, those tired days I searched every side road.
Is that my way home?
Craning my neck to see round every bend.
Wondering is home just past there? Back there?
Knocking on doors, "I think I may have come from here. Mind if I look around?"
Wondering where... where was mine?

The folks I met, some helpful, some not -
princes and priests and paupers -
None knew my land, none knew my way back.
Many had advice for my way forward -
Take this supplement, read this book, let's get coffee, ignore, well met.

I met animals too, but not very well.
Animals frightened me - what they knew, their posture

Back then I was not a pilgrim, but alone, aimless, homeless

One day I met a snail - small, like me; slow, like me.
I asked the snail "do you know the way home?"
The snail did not understand for it carried its home everywhere.
Ever forward, never running, carefully.

So, I became a pilgrim, from fields away.
Treading a one way path -
forward but with twists and turns and long delays,
Searching for them holy sites, new-built or relic
Searching for the whole and torn
Like a snail, slowly, building home for others,
Sometimes lost, forgotten, delayed.

Now I'm a pilgrim from a foreign land
I seek the outcasts, the widows, the Black Madonna,
the vine. all beauty. Rumi's ectasy.
I seek microbes, connections divine and bitter.

I'm a pilgrim of no tribe.
All my energy goes to walk this earth
Given wholly to wander this garden, this desert, this brook.
Now older, perhaps I won't shirk from the animals,
Perhaps take a horse as a teacher.