5. Up & Shell

Up

Upward

The road ascends

Up, up,

Not steep

Just up enough

That looking down

The harvested fields

Appear as an exquisite

Grandmothers' quilt

Of yellowed and brown fabric

Stitched with claypot red bobbin thread

Along the tilled and turned rows

Upward

The road curves

Up, up

Each rise looks to me

Like the edge of the world

Like two seas meeting

Like Earth and sky kissing

Like two roads converging

Yes, that is it,

Two roads converging

Into only one

Upward

We climb

Up, up

We newly minted pilgrims

Who've not yet shed

Our unnecessary belongings

Or the reasons we believe

We are on this road

Young pilgrims, us

Who still cling to GPS and

What we read in the guidebooks:

That every step is rich

With meaning

And every bird

Might be a messenger from God

We are still-green pilgrims

The ones who need arrows

To find their way

Who have yet to discover

There is only one direction

~ Cheryl Murfin, along the Camino de Santiago

The Point of the Shell

Think of Santiago as the arrow-point

Hinge of a scallop shell.

All the lines lead toward the hinge.

The many Camino roads are like these lines.

They all lead to Santiago.

That is why pilgrims carry the shell;

To announce where they are going;

As a sign of what they are attempting:

To move into sacred space.

Whatever that may mean to them.

~ Cheryl Murfin, along the Camino de Santiago