I long to go home—to the dwelling place of my fathers, where their steps were first set into the earth, and where the land yet bears the quiet impress of their passing. I would look upon the fields, where the grass grows deep and green, untroubled by haste, and I would go barefoot upon it, that I might feel the living warmth rising from its heart—an answering warmth, as though the ground itself remembers those who have walked it in faith and in labour, and yields that memory still.
I would gather within an ancient cill, where stone has kept its silence through long years, and where prayer has settled into the walls as breath into the body. There would I speak a blessing upon the land—not as one who claims dominion, but as one who returns in humility to that which was never wholly forsaken. And I would not stand alone, but among those who share this same quiet longing: for a time when life was not endured as a burden, but received as a telling; when hope lay not beyond reach, but dwelt openly among the people; when hands were drawn together, not by need alone, but by a higher calling that bound them in purpose and in peace.
If I but close mine eyes, though only for the space of a single breath, I am gathered into it.
I walk a path I have never trod, and yet it is known to me. The way bends as though it remembers my coming, and the earth yields beneath my step as though it had long awaited my return. Those who walk beside me are unknown to my sight, and yet nearer than any I have named companion. No word passes between us, nor is there need of it; for we are bound by something older than speech—a remembrance carried not in thought alone, but in the blood, in the breath, and in that hidden place where the spirit keeps what the mind has forgotten.
They, too, bear this longing. They, too, hold within them the quiet echo of lives not lived, and yet not wholly lost. There are those who would name such things as dream or fancy, the shaping of a restless mind that seeks comfort in what cannot be proven. Yet this cannot be so lightly set aside. For there stirs within the soul a current deep and unbidden, which neither yields to reason nor fades at command. It moves beneath the surface of our days, drawing the heart toward that which it has not seen, and yet has always known.
It calls—softly, yet without ceasing.
It turns the spirit backward, not in retreat, but in remembrance—toward those who have gone before, whose lives were set into the same earth, whose breath once mingled with the same wind. And in that turning there rises a longing, not only to remember, but to return: not merely to a place of soil and stone, but to a dwelling rightly called home.
Not fashioned by the hand, nor claimed by right—
but remembered, as one remembers breath.
© 2026 Steven Scott. All Rights Reserved.
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