Walking the Camino de Santiago strips you down to dust and dreams.
Somewhere on the Meseta, under that endless sky, I carried my father’s shadow in my steps, feeling the weight of loss and the whispers of grace.
This poem, Stillness on the Camino, was born in those quiet miles—a raw reflection on what it means to pause, to ache, and to find enough in the unknown.
It’s for pilgrims, and anyone who’s ever felt the pull of a path that remakes you.
Stillness on the Camino
My feet, caked with red dust of countless steps, pause not in weary surrender, but in a hospitalero’s quiet courtesy.
The Meseta unfurls like a breath held too long, beneath a sky asking only for my raw showing up.
Here, on this wide-open plain, edges blur, letting me sit with the ache of what I’ve carried— my father’s shadow etched into the stones, a quiet bet against the wind’s scattering of what I love.
Conscience flickers, a stubborn ember in pale ash, not a command to chase, but a steady trailmate whispering a call half-known, pulling me from hearth and modernity's grind into this wild Camino crucible.
Grace waits, unearned, a hand outstretched in the dark, asking only for my open grip, and my readiness to receive and return what’s given. You are made in the divine’s image, it breathes, like a cracked mirror catching light, the Way taking shape in me, rough and real.
Pilgrimage is no lazy man's river walk—it’s the blacksmith’s anvil, forging our path, where fists on blisters harden to callus, flinging shards of transcendent arrows scuffed into dirt: truth cuts through the fog of lies, goodness, a compass free of malice, beauty blooms from cracked, blistered earth like wildflowers in scarred soil.
Memento Mori ticks with every creaking step I take, yet nothing truly perishes—the shifting sands on this pilgrim’s trail, a dry riverbed carved with stubborn fruits from hidden stores, awe pushing back fear’s grip, gratitude roots around in the gravel we stir with our feet, love’s quiet flame kindles the tinder of grudges long resolved.
Knee-deep in this mythic drink, stories pulses to life, not far-off whispers but the beat of my own blood against eternity's hush. The Eternal Pilgrim in me aims for Santiago, pinging echos off some deep internal hum, following little yellow arrows on the hammered path with joy’s ringing cantor, peace’s unhurried plod, and humility’s bow to the creator's pull.
As light slants to weary gold, it hits me square: stillness is the pilgrim’s unmerited grace, calling for response, where the inside and outside meet, where the Way, once walked, is retraced with each fortunate dawn, a holy covenant, to rise again, take up my load and step across the next threshold.
My days blur into rough drafts of half-told tales with longing to walk the sacred path again. But in the stillness of my feeble prayers to the divine whisperer I hear:
Pay attention, Pilgrim, it’s all here, right now—your fierce ache for more,
yet trembling hold on memory's return, weave your Way, ahead.
¡Viva la Meseta!
~Lance v22,663
