Return Trip

the forty days and nights
passed like years, she writes:

you choose
    your mood
         make your way
and come again
to the city gate
    at an hour late
for finding lodgings
and food.

it is very like
one never left,
but for the sudden death

emergence was
unexpected,
yet edifying:

one sometimes
    has to make sacrifice
in order to know
    it is not needed;

a misapprehension
on the part of one
who thought to measure
commitment in cubits and
freedom in leagues

the gift of
    this return trip:

learning that
the meaning
and the measure
of life fully lived
is the love
that is greater
than death

learning to give it all up

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen