In a narrow shop,
where dust clung like devotion,
a man found a tent that smelled
of wet canvas and dreams.
Red and white – stiped like a circus,
it breathed stories before it even opened,
the kind of shelter not made for war
but for the quiet battles of fatherhood.
He brought it home—
not to conquer, but to cradle.
Pitched in the yard beneath the Utah sky,
children stared at its stripes like flags of a new country:
one where laughter ran free,
where mosquitoes sang lullabies,
where marshmallows blistered on sticks.
This tent— no cathedral,
but holy all the same.
It caught the breath of stars,
held the steam of coco sipped at dawn,
and remembered each child’s name
in the rustle of its fabric.
Years passed.
Time frayed the seams,
but not the memory.
The tent waited,
faded but faithful.
Then— a daughter, grown,
walking the thin line
between loss and light,
found herself in a room scented
with incense and fate.
A medium with eyes like still water said,
“He is here.
He reminds you ‘The tent of red and white.'”
And the daughter, at first bewildered,
felt a flutter like canvas stirred by summer wind.
She remembered: the tent.
The warmth. The man. The fireflies.
And suddenly, heaven was not sky, but memory.
Not clouds, but canvas.
Not harps, but hammocks and hiking boots.
Later, as dreams came and went
like deer at the edge of sleep,
she saw him:
not grand, but glad.
Not eternal, but near.
He spoke of pride and love— she woke full.
Now she tends to those living,
weary but willing.
Her hands carry love like lanterns,
her father’s voice a hum beneath it all.
For what is heaven, if not this?
A tent, waiting.
A daughter, remembering.
A father, forever just outside the zipper,
lighting the fire,
watching the stars.
