XVIII-XX

XVIII.

The eastern woods along our shaggy lawn
conceal a true menagerie of beasts.
The foxes, turkeys, mother doe with fawn
cross over to the western field to feast.

I often gaze into those trees and feel
attention from some older, deeper thing.
I can’t say that I know the fae are real
but I believe, come autumn and in spring.

My favorite theologian likes to write
that God knows what it is to be a stone
and is that knowledge not some sort of sprite
so we in Nature never are alone?

Omniscience thus gives everything a ghost.
I must admit, he makes more sense than most.


XIX.

I’ve never really had a fear of death
though dying as a process gives me pause.
Such meaning saturates our ev’ry breath;
a promised peace as to our end we draw.

If life, in fact, means anything at all,
if time on earth has purpose and is real,
then something must continue when we fall,
some spirit animating human zeal.

Ephemerality cannot suffice
to satisfy the drive of right and wrong.
We see the truth of virtue over vice,
transcendent beauty heard in ev’ry song.

My consciousness finds purpose in each day
and death can never bear this fact away.


XX.

The quiet life—I wonder, is it so?
Do monks and nuns possess all that I seek?
The Amish farm, defying status quo;
the mountain hermit, happy on his peak.

I know that I am shackled in my greed,
by pride and by possessions weighted down.
My stolen quiet moments plant a seed
of freedom from the frenzy all around.

I don’t think I could live without my books
or under strictures of communal life.
Regardless now I doubt that they would brook
a monk who had three children and a wife.

I wonder, though, the man I might’ve been
had I sought out monastic life within.