I saw my father in a vision looking straight ahead, walking quickly, carrying a heavy load, and I ran after him, shadowing his steps with my child's feet. I followed his gaze but could not see what he saw. My brothers ran behind me, trying to keep up, shadowing my steps, but I did not see them. Thus we each in turn picked up what ends we could see of a line whose beginning no one knows and tugged it forward. On a peak I sit in far-seeing air, knowing nothing, saying nothing. My eyes take in the world's shape, the lines of sky and earth, mountain walking, river running, trees and grasses reaching, sunlight feeding all; my eyes draw these shapes down into my spine, into my seat, and drop by drop feed the earth's mind; they write a line in a letter of a word in earth's story. On a nearby peak, a friend who was once a stranger. They were a stranger to me because I was a stranger to myself, and as I learned to befriend myself the stranger became my friend as well. Or was it the other way around. I cannot remember. I have forgotten so much. Have forgotten so much and am glad Rains come and wash away memories and I'm a glad stone polished by sky's touch. I am the peak of someone's aspirations, descendant, ally, mirrored maze and ancestral mound. Rains fill my channels, corners, kinks; valves clap open and chutes fill. Under these touches labyrinth lives: faces are walls are bridges: levers and seesaws, hidden joinery, the whole tangle turns in unseen hands following lines laid long ago. Floors become ceilings; windows trapdoors; obstacles paths. Someone pivots the mirror-maze marble of me in their gentle unseen hands with respect. Lines loop. Paths join. We come face to face. Re-spect to the old ones and the new ones. The gift of grace of seeing freshly, seeing change as change. One moment's re-spect begets the next's re-volution: re-turn to a center we did not know before but re-cognize now as it lights in the heart of the heart. Mine, yours. Only a few doubts linger in a face half-shadowed, half-lit: Has it been [[Four ways of missing it|so close]] all along? Do I accept this grace? --- *December 2025* *Thank you to Tasha, [Kamau Zuberi Akabueze](https://www.instagram.com/letthelightwork/), [Buckminster Barrett](https://deepcreektea.com/pages/the-collective-2)*