*

*

Satya lives in this house, but it is not her home.  Right now her home is two continents away, in a dusty village, with him.  He’s probably eating his evening meal of rose-flavored yoghurt and a mango.  Wherever her teacher resides, Satya’s home is in that place, at his feet.

            It is not yet dawn in the Hudson Valley.  While her daughter, Devi, her heart’s delight, dreams gently in the bedroom across the hall, Satya lets her soul fly home, to the hut beside the temple, and there he is.

            He feels the presence of her spirit and greets her with a wide smile, even though his eyes are closed.  The evening meal is over.  Others have come to sit in the presence of this man.  The silence is alive with his energy.  Satya allows her astral body to rest in the love pulsing from her teacher. 

            His white hair seems incandescent; his high cheekbones rise above the full beard.  He is wrapped in a blue shawl, sitting on a folded white wool blanket.

            When her dogs begin to bark, Satya’s soul sails back through the dark and light of half a day, back into her body of muscle and bone.  It feels at first like she has put on a suit of armor, cold and unyielding.  She cannot move her fingers; she must consciously tell her heart to beat faster.  The dogs lick her hands; their warm tongues and worry have her eyelids opening.  Satya stares up at the pale blue ceiling.  Tears trickle from the outer edges of her eyes.  The longing is always the worst of the pain.

            “Here I am again,” she thinks.  “Still such a long, long way from home.”