There is that which holds

when least constrained by vows: being not fixed concurrence at each step, not anxious grip or reverential share

of every mood or breath or hour

but try-out - foray -

venture by ones into thicket or dunes:

even, at times, quite gone from sight beyond frontiers:

being leave both to lag behind on a road

or streak ahead; to accept salutes

in a dozen tongues, and exchange tales

while sheltering from storms in some rude byre

or leaning, at ease, against the sun-warmed stones

of a castle wall.... Even, if caught by fall

of dusk, to break bread

in unknown tents, by flickering fires:

hearing how songs from others' throats may at first

grate, as an alien sound, and yet - towards dawn -

all become part of the same song. As light,

whether desert-blaze or glide

of a single gleam into a shuttered room

always must issue from the same shared source....

O my friend!

Who travel thus

earliest may learn, by risk, to trust

the heart's true hold on what the hand lets go.

And so, en route, prove best cue'd

for whatever summons are yet to come -

as a mountain-horn

from afar, and faint

through still-intervening drifts of mist

is likeliest caught by one below

who, from the outset, has been drawn

by each

successive

half-spelled call....