© TaeHun Yoon, 1979

The earth was his bride, silent and sure,
Waiting for the touch of his step.
Where he walked, flowers rose
As if the ground remembered spring.
When he looked upon a tree,
The tree broke open in bloom.

Those who heard him speak
Felt something stir inside—
As if their hearts had grown wings.

Heaven leaned closer to earth;
Stone and cloud were kin again.
And I, no longer bound,
Found myself saying, I am free.

[The soul was the beam beneath it all.]

The fire that burns you now
Casts its net wide—
Catching, drifting,
Then sleeping in the calm of dusk.
Each dawn becomes a year,
Each year, a life passing
From one world to another.

But if you wait too long,
If fear keeps your hands from rising,
You will lose him forever.

They said, “One day?”
But the air grew tight—
They could not breathe.
Death was leaning close.

Do not turn around.
If you are swallowed, let it be so.

The ball is already rolling.
No hand can still it now.

So say farewell—
To your shoes, your bread.
You have already left the ground.

You are soaring now,
Leaving sea and soil behind,
Rising, light as breath,
Into the waiting air.

Author’s Note

“Soaring” was born out of a meditation on freedom — not as escape, but as a movement of the soul that rises through surrender. The poem imagines transformation as both spiritual and earthly: where every step, every gaze, brings life into bloom. It carries echoes of resurrection, the breaking of boundaries between heaven and earth, the divine and the human.

In its rhythm, I wanted the language to feel both grounded and light — to rise naturally, as if the wind itself were carrying the voice. It is also a quiet farewell: to what binds, to what feeds, to what has been known. The act of letting go is not loss, but the beginning of flight.

May the reader feel, as I did while writing, that mysterious pull of grace — the invitation to rise, softly and without fear, into a larger breath of being.