Brazen, your scallop shell bookends
on the mantle squeeze six
books about Spain.

Staid, they proffer their daily
hint of the pilgrim way
not yet taken.

Sure, you took a week to hike
from Paris to Chartres
fueled by

baguette dipped in au lait,
the gaiety of ladies,
quaint convents.

True, we walked a good leg
of the Swiss Jakobsweg
on our eighteenth

anniversary, and the souvenir
monastery beer stein is
here to prove it.

But the principal stamps are still
absent from our Camino
passports.

The scallop shell still draped
on your pack has
been battered

in transit, but not en route
to Compostela. Its remaining
ribs mark paths

that point to the ground here beneath
our feet. Are we merely
cheating? Has

Saint James called us away along
another route? Or are we
sore afraid

of what he and his friends might
say between Basque
and the sea?