I thought mystery would arrive like theatre—
a word of fire;
but mystery came as the discipline of the unseen:
a quiet hand smoothing what anger split,
mercy set stone by living stone,
the heart’s small trowel moving in silence
to hold what would fall.
So I began to carry you outward—
not as a lantern lifted for praise,
but as a hidden flame kept from wind.
I let you level my gaze
until I could meet the stranger
without hunger for rank or reward.
I learned to bow to grey hair
as one bows to snowfall—
not because it is weak,
but because it has endured.
I kept a white cloth at the waist of thought—
not a badge, but a reminder:
keep clean hands, keep humble hands,
even when the world is mud.
A beehive woke beneath my ribs,
a humming labour of care,
each small sweetness made by work,
not by talk.
When widows stood at winter’s edge,
I tried to be a door that did not slam.
When shame hung like a torn coat,
I tried to stitch dignity into the seam.
And where the common road is held by law—
that hard iron that keeps the cart from chaos—
I did not spit on it for pride’s sake;
I honoured the order that lets the weak sleep.
Yet I remembered: obedience without morality
is only a well-swept cage.
So I kept you burning—
a private tribunal of conscience,
a lamp that judges without hatred.
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.
