Slow MoverLast Light of Orbit 59
Tonight
I am riding the dark rim of a circle,
carried by a world
that has never once stopped turning
beneath my restless feet.
Somewhere behind me,
the sun still touches the first hour
of the day I was born—
that bright door through which I came,
crying, breathing,
astonished into being.
And now,
fifty-nine journeys later,
I approach that door again
from the other side of time.
Not as an infant,
not innocent of pain,
not untouched by sorrow,
but bearing the strange cargo
of a life still becoming:
songs not yet fully sung,
stories rising like constellations
out of the black field of the mind,
wood shavings, prayers,
pulpit words and private wounds,
the names of those I love
burned warm inside me
like lights in the windows
of a house at night.
This year has not carried me gently.
My body has spoken
in the difficult language of weakness;
I have learned again
how fiercely the spirit longs
for flesh that will follow it—
hands steady enough to make,
lungs deep enough to sing,
strength enough to stand
and speak of hope
without needing first
to be rescued by it.
And yet—
even weary,
I have felt new worlds
pressing against the walls of me.
I have heard characters knocking.
I have seen cities rise from mist.
I have watched peace take strange forms—
a game, a song,
a tale whispered beside the ruins,
a tiny flame refusing
the vast machinery of darkness.
Perhaps this is what grace is:
not that the journey leaves us unwounded,
but that the wounded still dream;
not that the night is empty of fear,
but that even now
there are stars bright enough
to navigate by.
Tonight
I am almost at the crossing.
The earth is bearing me
through the final miles
of my fifty-ninth voyage around the fire,
and I can feel tomorrow
waiting just beyond the curve—
not as a promise that all will be easy,
not as a guarantee of healing,
but as an opening
in the wilderness of time.
Behind me:
every journey I somehow survived.
Before me:
the sixtieth flight,
wide and uncharted,
shimmering with things
that have not yet found their names.
And above me—
or within me—
or nearer than either—
the One who has traveled every mile,
who was present at my first breath
and remains
in this midnight breathing,
this fragile body,
this fierce desire
to keep creating,
keep loving,
keep turning toward the light.
So let the last hours come.
Let the old circle close
like a well-worn book
whose pages are stained
with tears and fingerprints
and sudden bursts of color.
Let me stand for a moment
on this spinning sphere,
under the patient stars,
and say:
I was here.
I am still here.
I have been carried farther
than I knew how to go.
And when morning arrives,
when the invisible line is crossed,
I will lift my face
toward the ancient sun
and begin again—
older,
gentler,
still unfinished,
still beloved,
still burning
with the holy ache
of being alive.
Mark Wyner Won’t Comply 
