The Initiate

To my friend Tim

-Restless architect-
you mapped each form
upon what survived before.
Sacrifice proved the weight of pride, 
the ache of history.
Foundations set in brick and memory: 
what remains after the offerings,
after palms have bled in calloused lines?

Silence persists-
woven in the fog
absent applause,

You are stretched thin,
the body endures order tested by fracture.
Progress is slow-
one stone, one breath.
Each choice, however modest, a fragment pressed to clarity.

Defeat doesn’t arrive as collapse-
but as gradual turning,
the echo fading as attention bends
toward the hands-
marrow strengthened,
bones set anew by honest labor.

Then-
from mist: a solitary beacon,
the lighthouse calls in increments,
guiding resolve,
not toward recognition,
but away from it.

Let their chorus call you fool;
builder becomes Initiate.
Ritual divides habit from invention-
new patterns for holding, and for letting go.

Mirages recede, the fog lifts-
the bow you give is no longer to men,
but to what endures
when structure dissolves.

Presence is the sacred order that remains:
woven into stone,
threaded into silence,
each act- minute, sacred, real-
Eternal.