returning

Quoting Mark Buchanan again, this time from his Your Church is Too Safe (Zondervan, 2012): 

 Historian Daniel Boorstin documents a momentous shift that occurred in North America in the nineteenth century:  we stopped calling people who went on trips travelers and started calling them tourists. 

Traveler literally means "one who travails."  He labors, suffers, endures ...   A tourist, not so.  Tourist means, literally, "one who goes in circles."  He's just taking an exotic detour home. 
 

they have traveled, I think
dropping down on familiar soil
wind turned as they landed,
swept in from the north

a new thinness, a sparseness,
grief, joy, sharpness,
clarity, wisdom,
pruned, honed, tested, poured out

returning

perhaps we have traveled as well
to the brink of life
to watch it spill over the banks
emptied

returning mute
for what did we see
but a fading
mystery

returning shaken
for what did we see
but a glory
within the fading

returning to a table
after a long summer silence
we ate together
laughed, remembered

singing, speaking
praying, waiting
we come back changed
travelers

returning

come to the table that he's prepared for you