Tread not the paths that Time lets fall like leaves,
nor count the footprints lost in shifting sand;
but mark the soul’s flight where your cliffs stand fast,
the light unquenched, though all the world forgets.
Weigh not your days in harvests gone to rot,
but in the root that held through frost and flaw:
what you were in the hush, what gave unbidden,
the fire you banked ‘gainst winter’s gnawing jaw.
The sea asks not if ever it finds shore—
it knows but wave, and salt, and yielding deep;
so lives the hand that tends, yet claims no keeping,
a garden sown in trust: the yield is sure.