The Path Home
The Analects record Confucius saying, “‘The wise find joy in water, the benevolent find joy in mountains.’ But he also praised the wanderer who returns with a full heart.”
The Forked Road
The young man seeks
Yesterday, I watched the old men
walk the straight road to the river.
They never glanced at the bamboo grove,
never followed the fox’s track.
“Cultivate virtue,” they said.
“Order your steps.”
But the path behind me is already overgrown,
the path ahead has a hundred mouths.
I step off, not in rebellion,
just a question hidden in my mind.
Divagation, my first breath of morning.
Divagation, the crack in the family drum.
The Grove of No Answers
The young man wanders.
Bamboo whispers like Confucius’ sleeve
if Confucius ever got lost on purpose.
I meet a woman weaving grass.
“Where does this path go?”
She laughs. “It doesn’t go. It is.”
I sit beside her for five hours.
We say nothing. She teaches me
how a single blade bends without breaking.
Purpose does not shout from a mountaintop.
It grows sideways, like moss,
in the shadow of a wrong turn.
The Broken Cart
The young learns ritual in failure.
My cartwheel cracks on a stone
no straight road would be placed there.
I spend the whole afternoon
shaving a new axle from driftwood.
A farmer lends me his mallet.
His daughter shares her rice.
I learn their names.
This is li, the weaving of small threads.
Confucius said: “The wise delight in water,
the benevolent delight in mountains.”
But he forgot to say:
the lost delight in hands that help them rise.
The Village of Echoes
The young man finds the old teacher inside himself.
At dusk, an old man calls me in.
“You are far from the main road.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’ve been failing well.”
He pours tea.
“My teacher’s teacher once said:
“The noble person does not use the path as a cage.
Divagation is not the enemy of purpose.
It is purpose practicing its joints.”
I sleep on his floor.
That night I dream I am a stream.
Bent, divided, pooled,
but never lost.
Returning
The young man’s resolution.
I take the straight road back to the village.
It looks different now.
Not a line, but a spine.
I have no grand answer.
Only a small one.
Purpose is not a destination.
It is the care you carry
into every detour.
Confucius wandered for fourteen years.
He came home not because he found the way,
but because he learned
to recognize the way in every place he stopped.
So here I am.
Not fixed, not finished.
Just a young man who now knows,
divagation is not loss.
It is fidelity to a world too wide for any single road.
May you enjoy your journey dear wanderers.
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My heart ached reading this because of the profound truth in it. Don't try to control your path - let it reveal itself to you. Really vibrates something deep within. I need a tissue! I really love the spirit in your work. It's beautiful.
The thoughtfulness of taking time. To notice. To listen. To be. The world needs this medicine ~ always.