Some climb to summits
to hear eternity in the thin air.
Some descend to darkness
to watch shadows dance.
She found hers halfway,
in a cave,
where trousers and pullover
sat in place of saffron and ash.



There was no revelation,
only cushions patterned like chickens,
giggles in smoke,
a sense that life might tilt
toward the noble,
toward something higher.



Years passed
lectures given,
books written,
names remembered: Kierkegaard, Eliot, Spinoza.
The cave receded,
but the yearning stayed.



She writes of rivers
flowing without shape,
of biographers
lifting above time
to see footprints resolved
into a stork at dawn.



We live,
we stumble in the mud,
we circle back,
we fall short.
Only afterward,
in art,
in memory,
in a sudden vision
the figure emerges.



And so she guides us upward,
through lives,
through fears,
through sages in other caves,
until we begin to suspect:
the noble, the radiant,
is not elsewhere,
but traced by our own steps.