Camino Songs

by Steven Wingate

I want to walk the Camino and sing
surprising and enchanting my fellows
with Gregorian chants from memory:

songs like arches spanning unbroken sky
lifting pilgrim voice from pilgrim gullet
praising how your spirit fills our bodies

how the world still bursts with fertile beauty
despite our soul-pollution miring it
praising light’s journey from sunburst through sky

through eyes and skin to lung and blood vessel
turning to hope and steadfastness within
this scarlet human miracle machine:

starving at all times and in all seasons
to become creatures sated by your breath
unconcerned that we cannot grasp this drive

this goal so deep, this alchemy of want
that bids us drift along The Way, singing
union with you: the one gift unexplored.