The King has arrived

For years I kept a room I could not enter,
swept a floor I never learned to stand on,
lit the lamps and left before the evening,
guarding gates I could not name the guard of.

I did not know the waiting was the making.
I did not know the long walk was the road.
I called it lost. I called it never-getting.
I did not know that every step was owed.

And then — no trumpet, no announcing thunder —
only a stillness deepening the still,
the pool gone flat and clear enough to enter,
the water holding, patient, keeping vigil.

The King has arrived.
I did not build him. I only cleared the temple, year on year.
I only kept the water. And he came to it.
And now I understand what I was doing here.

I am not the King. I never was, and never will.
I am the one who waited at his door —
who prepared the room, who tended,
and who trembles, glad, to stand in presence, and no more.

He does not rush, nor raise his voice.
His leadership is patience,
and his throne is the quiet I had thought was only absence —
and now I know I never was alone.

And this is the strange gratitude that finds me:
not for the ease, but for the aching climb —
for every night I could not feel him near me
was a night he was arriving, all the time.

So let me sit. The waters keep their vigil.
The guard is set. The lamps are burning low.
I waited, and I prepared, and he has come now.
I am home in him. There is nowhere else to go.