Longing

Nightfall approaches in the woods,
A wanderer stands with heart atremble bare,
An exile lost where shadow’s secrets lie.
Forgotten path dim-lit by hope and prayer,
He drifts ‘twixt cedars old as mortal sin;
Their boughs like elders in their silent stare.
The voice of dusk bid his quest begin,
As leaves in vespers sway with sigh and groan—
He wakes from world’s illusions thick and thin.
In solitude, behold: he stands alone,
While dying sunbeams bleed in threads of gold,
His spirit famished, soul an empty throne.

Footfalls unsteady on a path untold,
He staggers deeper into yawning gloom,
His hunger carving out what hearts can’t hold.
The forest hums a half-forgotten tune,
Chant of the ancients from a distant space,
Where Plato’s Forms in silent vigil loom:
The True and Good beyond our earthly helm,
A world of patterns, primal and ideal,
Reflecting wisdom that mere flesh o’erwhelms.
This pilgrim yearns for truths no dream can steal,
But each step falters on the needful stone;
His mortal doubts around his ankles congeal.

The path like serpent coils ‘neath mossy bone,
No straight road clear to promised shining gate;
Thus mortal mind by paradox is thrown.
An ashen fox darts past in frantic state,
A fleeting spectre ‘cross the pilgrim’s track;
Its feral eyes agleam with cunning fate.
That ember gaze which glows in fur of black
Seers through his essence to the hunger fraught,
As if to judge the burden on his back.
Our seeker shudders, conscience keenly caught,
By spectres of his sins that cease to rest,
Old idols carved from yearnings we have wrought.

In hush of eve the wood becomes confessor,
An altar carved of oak and thirst and flame,
His memories laid bare as by possessor.
Each trunk a pillar in this psychic frame,
Each root an anchor dragging down to truth—
He wades through recollection bound by shame.
There in the thicket, voice of quiet sooth
Calls from the cedar’s heart in patient tone,
An elder spirit speaking to lost youth:
“O pilgrim, weary treading all alone,
What draws thee through this labyrinth of dread?
What thirst compels thy soul from hearth and home?”

The wanderer, startled, lifts his heavy head,
He scans the gloom for who addressed him thus
And spies an ancient hermit robed in red.
Bent by weight of years, beard silvery muss,
This figure smiles with eyes of ageless grace,
A gentle solace in the night’s discuss.
He leans upon a staff of knotted lace,
Each twist of wood carved with an olden tongue,
Symbols of star and sun along its face.
His voice like leaves that withering have sung,
Yet strong enough to shake the cypress old:
“Seek ye in darkness what from light hath sprung?

Long have I waited in this midnight cold
For one whose hunger leads him to this gate,
To test thy heart like iron in the mold.
Heed now the path which secret tongues relate,
For this dark forest hides the only door
Into the truth beyond mere mortal fate.
Though worn and lost, thy soul holds ancient lore;
Within thee lies the spark of holy flame,
To light the way where none have walked before.
Fear not the shadow nor thy errant shame—
Each step in darkness sets the spirit free.
Thy hunger carves a god—here endeth game.”

The wanderer’s knees quiver suddenly,
As though the earth itself had softly sighed;
He bows before wisdom on bended knee.
“Who art thou?” to the hermit he replied,
Voice hoarse with thirst for counsel and for grace;
“My spirit starves, by hollow dreams denied.
In sooth, I come from life’s fruitless chase,
Where every promise turned to dust and wind.
No idol sates, no mortal wealth can place
Contentment in my heart nor peace of mind.
I yearn to grasp what ancient seers have known,
A truth eternal none can break or bind.”

The hermit nods, as if these words were grown
From seeds he planted eons past in time.
“Thy thirst,” quoth he, “no less than mine hath shown—
For mortal souls must rise through dirt and grime
To sip the dew that hides on heaven’s bough.
In hunger’s maw, desire becomes sublime.
Mark well the path: what matters is the how,
Not what illusions promise to provide.
To carve a god from hunger shapes a vow,
Yet knows not how to fill the void inside.
Step forth, my child, the journey must commence
Through rites of old where truth and self collide.”

So saying, he extends a hand immense,
A bony limb with strength of oaken age;
Our pilgrim clasps it, trusting in his sense.
With step in stride they breach the forest’s cage,
Where roots retreat and gloom concedes to night—
Each bough bent back to carve a narrow stage.
The wanderer follows, heart drumming contrite,
As though ascending some primordial stair
Where mind transcends this worldly fleshly plight.
The hermit leads, a flame beyond despair,
His staff aglow with runes of hidden light,
Illuming brambles in soft saffron glare.

In winding serpentines they climb through night,
Past skulls of fallen trees and beasts decayed;
In deathly ruin flickers insight’s sight.
Our seeker, in each trunk with rot arrayed,
Sees mirrored glimpses of himself undone,
As if his vice in wood and worm displayed.
Here lust, there pride, envy beneath the sun,
Carven in bark or crawling in the loam;
Ghosts of the soul transmuted one by one.
With each foul visage seen the more to roam,
He feels a shedding of some heavy weight,
A scale from ego peeled, another comb.

Thus purged by vision of each dire strait
His faltering heart had sailed by folly’s gale,
He feels new breath beyond his mortal state.
At last, they reach a clearing hushed and pale,
A glade where moonlight paints a silver dome,
An argent sea wherein ideas set sail.
The hermit stops beside a granite home
Of rugged stone with moss in ancient script,
Its surface carved with creatures that do roam.
This monolith in shimmering light is dripped,
Pale sentinel of secrets to unfold;
In each strange glyph a prophecy is crypt.

Upon its face the hermit’s staff takes hold,
His withered fingers trace a symbol raw—
A triangle entwined with circle bold.
At once, the stone begins to quake with awe,
A moaning creak as doorway appears,
Inviting them through mouth of ancient maw.
With gracious nod, the sage allays his fears:
“Behold the threshold to the deeper wood—
There lies the temple of the hidden seers.
What must be gleaned beyond is understood
Not through the eyes alone but by the heart,
And by the hunger that would carve a god.”

Thus beckoned, pilgrim readies to depart
This mortal glade for fields of mythic truth.
Though fear yet coils, resolve withstands its smart.
Into the darkness carved by ageless youth—
The youthful hunger old as humankind—
He steps behind his guide in twilight’s ruth.
Stone lips seal shut as soon as they enshrined
Their passing forms, entombing them in night.
No way but onward through the cavern blind.
Though unaccustomed to this lack of sight,
He feels the hermit’s presence like a flame,
Each footfall guided by that ghostly light.

Their path descends through corridors that claim
The echoes of their steps in solemn halls,
Where unseen choirs whisper secret Name.
A spectral breeze through emptiness now calls,
Carrying chants of distant devotees,
In languages ere Babel’s tower falls.
The wanderer’s heart leaps—could one of these
Be those who from all climes sought wisdom high?
Now disembodied, swirling as the seas?
He whispers soft: “What voices here comply?
Are these illusions wrought by weary mind,
Or counsel’s heralds drawn from space on high?”

The hermit’s voice returns both calm and kind:
“Each echo here is memory of prayer,
A plea by pilgrims past now so entwined.
They sought in darkness paths beyond despair,
Carving their longing out of flesh and thought,
Invoking truth beyond what senses share.
Their words yet linger—lessons dearly bought—
To guide new seekers at the journey’s start.
Heed well their ghostly choir where hope is wrought.”
As if on cue, one voice from void apart
Rings clearly in that moment through the air:
“A fire is kindled by friction of heart with heart.”

The wanderer clings to the hermit’s care,
While stone beneath their feet slopes further down;
The darkness thickens, heavy to compare.
The guide’s soft light in gloom a spectral crown,
Glinting on damp walls carved with mystic art—
In runes unknown the truth of yore is sown.
At length, a welcome glow begins to start
Ahead, an ember, like a lone star set
In midnight well beyond the world apart.
Their footsteps quicken, hope and caution met,
For at that flame an altar altar stands,
A vigil left in cavern’s cryptic net.

They near and see, with eyes and heart and hands,
A lamp of ancient oil sputtering low,
Upon an altar carved in these far lands.
Each carving on its face speaks what we know
And what we yearn yet still to comprehend—
In swirling patterns, flames and trees do flow.
In one corner a phoenix meets its end,
In raging fire to ashes cold and grey,
Yet from that ash climbs newborn to ascend.
Another side: an oak stands in decay,
Hollowed by age and struck by lightning white,
But from charred stump shoots green to find its day.

And there, inscribed with gentlest of delight,
A humble carpenter at work with wood
Carves forms of beauty birthed from inner sight.
Our wanderer beholds and understood
The motif weaving through these varied scenes:
Of transformation wrought from bad or good.
Fire, wood, carving—visions each convenes
To whisper something just beyond his grasp,
Like half-forgotten tales from childhood dreams.
His fingers trace the woodcarver’s firm clasp
Upon the chisel shaping holy face,
Perhaps a god drawn out with each light rasp.

Then out from darkness steps in sudden grace
A new arrival robed in raven black,
A hood concealing visage from this place.
Though silent footfalls gave no hint or track,
Our wanderer senses presence now profound,
A soul awakened from time’s endless slack.
The hermit bows to one on sacred ground,
A greeting given not with word but heart,
As if two kin by destiny are bound.
The hooded one then draws a bit apart,
Unveiling ancient eyes both young and old,
Within whose depths universes impart.

The pilgrim trembles though not from the cold—
For recognition stirs in marrow deep,
As if those eyes his own essence behold.
A voice ensues from caverns half-asleep,
Gentle and fierce all in one measured note:
“Brave soul who dares through midnight gloom to creep,
What is it that you seek in worlds remote?”
The wanderer finds his voice with trembling sound:
“I seek the Truth beyond life’s antidote.
I seek to quench the thirst where none abound,
To know what meaning fires thee eternal wheel,
What hidden patterns in our fate are wound.”

The hooded figure nods with stern appeal,
And in those eyes a flame begins to dance,
A flicker born from fervor’s holy zeal.
“To hunger for the Truth is no mere chance,”
Intones the figure, raising slender hand,
“But mortal hearts can starve from ignorance.
To carve a god from hunger—understand—
Is to risk worship of a hollow form,
A phantom by desires falsely manned.
Thus path to wisdom first must bravely storm
Each vain illusion to the very core,
And break the idols by true vision shorn.”

Our wanderer hears and feels an ache he bore
Since earliest youth: the fear of being blind
To life’s grand meaning, lost forevermore.
He sees again those idols in the mind
That one by one in forest he had glimpsed—
Their promises false joys that ever bind.
In rising sorrow at a life misspent,
He bows his head, choked by a voiceless cry;
Two glistening tears from laden eyelids vent.
They drop upon the dusty stone to die,
Dark patches on the temple’s ancient floor—
As though Earth drinks the offering from sky.

The hooded sage extends a hand once more
And lifts the pilgrim’s chin with gentle grace,
“Your tears anoint the path we seek and soar.
Within your grief lies gift to here unlace,
For emptiness can hold the seed of all—
In void of sorrow sprouts joy’s sacred face.
Now steel your spirit for what shall befall,
And trust the fire that purifies the soul;
We journey forth through zones beyond the wall.”
At that, the hermit and this sage cajole
The wanderer toward a further gate,
A threshold leading to the second scroll.

The pilgrim stepping through with trembling feet,
His old life cast aside, stripped desolate.
In darkness borne by guiding lights he meets
A flicker of hope where wisdom’s flame entreats.