The Road to Santiago

A townsman's life is even, like the dust upon the road;
 Not changing with the seasons — just fortune's fickle load.
 But sitting on my step and bending hide and thread to task
 I saw the first man walking, I saw the first man walking
 I saw the first of many walking past.
 In ones and twos they traveled; the first hints of the wave
 With hat and stick and scallop they would go to see the grave
 Of the Saint who'd lived among us, a town he'd come to save
 As he walked along the road to Santiago.
 With pennies in their pockets and blisters on their feet
 They'd come within their weariness, the humble and the meek.
 For while a day could bring them
 wages, these months would bring release
 From the road that they were walking, this road that they were walking
 This road that led them forth in their belief.
 Soon the trickle was a torrent; then the torrent was a flood
 And like Noah how they laughed amid the gadflies and the mud
 And I wondered what they shared that made such disparate men beloved
 As they walked along the road to Santiago.
 For one had come from Germany and one from here in Spain
 And one from near the Bosphorus where Constantine had reigned
 From every land they sallied forth then ventured home again
 And found a road worth walking, they found this road worth walking
 For all agreed their roads were much the same.
 And so I laid my work aside — the day's long toils would keep,
 For, what was said? "A man must sow, if he intends to reap"?
 So with a laugh I set to putting blisters on my feet
 As I joined them on the road to Santiago.