The Golden City.

I.
The water does not move,
but waits
a mirror caught between breath and silence,
between this world and the gold one.

There is no wind.
Only the hush of a note held too long,
suspended in the throat of prayer.
It is then I see it
not directly,
but as you see a deer in the trees
just before it flees.
A shimmer,
not quite touch,
but closer than anything.

II.
The city floats above the river
but only in reflection,
as if heaven were remembering itself
in the quiet of earth’s face.
Spires, gilded arches,
the long reach of light
cascading from towers that do not cast shadows.
Everything is gold
not bright, but warm,
not burning, but infinite.
Not seen,
but known.

III.
Once,
when I was too close to the edge,
a fisherman said,
Not yet.
And I believed him.
Because the river was wide,
and his boat
smelled like cedar and time.
He turned me back gently,
but this time
there was no boat.
Only the water.
Only the city,
just out of reach,
like the name of someone I loved
before I was born.

IV.
In worship,
I wasn’t asking.
I was singing.
And maybe that’s why
it came
not as promise,
but as glimpse.
The kind that folds into your ribs
like a secret you remember only
when sunlight touches still water,
and nothing stirs,
and something inside you says:
Yes.
There it is.
Still waiting.

One day,

I will be there.