The road unraveled like a ribbon
From some unseen, revolving spool.
I set my face to the horizon,
A student in a stubborn school
Who thought the only holy motion
Was thrusting toward a distant goal,
A straight-line flight of pure devotion
To satisfy the marching soul.
I walked. The mile-marks fell like hours.
I walked until the sun became
A copper disk through golden showers
Of dust that spelled a holy name.
And then---a stumble. Not a turning
Of will, but just a shift of stone.
And yet I felt the curious burning
Of one who walks, but not alone.
For in the lurch, the wobble, swaying,
The counter-step, the little slide,
A backward foot was softly playing
A part no forward pace could hide.
It pulled the earth, it traced a crescent,
It drew a breath I didn’t know
Was needed in the endless present
To let the forward motion grow.
I saw a line of pilgrims weaving,
Not one of them a faultless guide.
Some staggered, laughed, or paused, believing
The path was wide, and not a stride
Was wasted. Even those retreating
Were crafting with peculiar grace
A pattern that the steps repeating
Could never, in their sameness, trace.
“Step back,” they sang, “to learn the measure.
Step back, and feel the pressure shift.
The backward step contains a treasure:
It is the dancer’s holy gift.
It is the wind-up, the gathering,
The bow pulled taut before the tune,
The inhale that precedes the blathering
Of trumpets underneath the moon.”
I watched a child retreat from morning,
Scoop up a stone the forward pace
Had missed, then spin with sudden, dawning
Delight upon her former place.
She held the stone up to the brightness,
A backward-gleaned, exquisite thing,
And then she ran with doubled lightness
To show the find, and laugh, and sing.
I saw a mother, old and bending,
Step back to kiss a fallen son,
And in that backward gesture, mending
What forward years had left undone.
I saw a friend retrace the gravel
To lace the shoe a comrade lost,
And understood: we all unravel
The forward path at backward cost,
And yet the fabric grows the stronger,
The pattern richer where we tread,
Because the road extends far longer
Through every backward, gentle thread.
Now when the dust of progress chokes me,
And zealot-Forward shouts his creed,
A backward step, a pause, evokes me
To plant and water a new seed.
Not regression---no, a deep returning
To find what linear haste let fall,
A pivot in the constant yearning
That makes the dance a dance at all.
So if you see me stepping oddly---
A little back, a sideways glide---
Know I am praising, high and godly,
The full rotation, not the ride.
The dance is not a launched arrow,
Not even a road that runs from home;
It is a field where all steps harrow,
But none are lost in loam.