Unknowing Pilgrim

The days go by
unnoticed as breathing

- weeks, months, maybe years -

and then, perhaps, at the end
of a dark avenue of leafless trees

- just when you were not specially
looking, thinking or expecting -

you come across a simple church
- rough, stone-hewed -

and witness a rush of winter sun
spotlighting dark ivied corners

of the graveyard, fragile symmetries
of spider webs, now dewbright filigree.

This sudden, unsought
gleam of understanding

renders you breathless,
altered in some way

just for an instant,
clarifying for a moment

what you'd half thought
or dimly felt one time

- on the road to Damascus
or to Egypt in flight -

that you're an unknowing pilgrim
at an altar of pure light.