Curled in the chair by the eleventh floor window, I watch rain and the early lights of a downtown evening, boats tied up quiet in the marina and cars rushing over the bridge.

I feel foreign in this new world, out of place here. Is this really to be home for the next few years? I wonder when I’ll waken and discover it a dream, a fancy hotel in which I’ve been granted a few nights until someone discovers I don’t have a seven-figure bank balance.

A tall canvas leans against the wall next to the guitar case lying open and the bookshelves not yet organized. The lonely figure struggles up the rough slope, doubled beneath the weight of a cross. He climbs, a silhouette against the many-layered planet behind. So small he seems, just one bent man before this giant ball.

So small I feel too.

A gull soars at eye level, lifted.

The small figure at the center of it all has invited and he has paid and I belong here because this is where he has placed me. And in him it all holds together, the mud-brick home where I have lived without plumbing and this many-windowed building with its own swimming pool. In him I hold together, too. There, here, he always calls me closer, and no one can snatch me from his hands.

The guitar lies forgotten on the loveseat across the room. We had sung truth together. “And I will soar with you, your Spirit leads me on, in the power of your love.”

The gulls rest now, held, but they will soar again on the morning’s breath.