LIV-LIX

  

LIV.

My reading is both therapy and rest,
recharging when my batteries are spent.
I need a book a week to keep my best;
at any less I garner discontent.

The clergy like myself are introverts;
our interactions tally up a cost.
A lack of solitude can quickly hurt;
bereft of holy silence, we get lost.

The roles of father, husband, parish priest
embody both my life and so my love
but they can be exhausting at the least.
I need recuperation time thereof.

With all abed it’s just me and my book
replenishing the energy they took.


LV.

Now Halloween is in the rearview mirror
but Hallowtide has not yet passed us by.
Three days of requiem and fun with fear
to face mortality with faithful eye.

I spent All Souls attending fun’ral rights
as well befits the last Day of the Dead.
Our Youth Group have their food drive hunt tonight
and we will pray the Vespers Black instead.

A cassock, candle, skull to set the mood;
a homily on hauntings in our town.
So after they have finished with their food
I’ll tell them of the Cross and of the Crown.

Before we bid the Hallowtide farewell
remember Christ has conquered death and hell.


LVI.

On Saturday, my one day to sleep in,
I rise in cold and dark at five a.m.
It’s rifle season, so the hunt begins.
Prepare the woods for human-made mayhem.

I’m not a hunter, though I know my guns
and sat a stand for bow season years back.
Oh, no, this deer obsession is our son’s.
His first kill mounted shows its homely rack.

I gen’rally support his hobby here.
It gets the boy outside and up a tree.
He sits at dawn in frosty weather clear
and for a time from cell phones he is free.

Within the womb of Nature we are whole
and find a peace for body, mind, and soul.


LVII.

The library becomes a second home
unto our youngest who goes ev’ry day.
We pass it whensoever we may roam
to drop or pick up books along our way.

She’s working through a series at the rate
of one a day, a near-obsessive pace.
The stack at home can also help me sate
my tendency to hoard books like a race.

I take out more than schedules let me read—
at least I help their circulation stats—
and when I’m doing chores I then proceed
to listen to an audio format.

Not only does this benefit ourselves;
we donate lots of books to fill their shelves.


LVIII.

I’m home alone this Sunday afternoon.
The kids are at a farm up north of town.
My wife officiates a fun’ral soon
and colder weather’s starting to bear down.

The silence wraps around me like a cloak,
luxuriating in the wordless wind.
I close my eyes and solitude evokes
an ecstasy as sweet as any sin.

I know I often touch upon this theme:
not loneliness but joy at time alone.
The decadence of quiet makes it seem
like roaring thunder deep in flesh and bone.

This timelessness lasts but a little while
yet even these few hours make me smile.


LIX.

Religion is a spiral arcing back
on old and ancient things with open eyes;
a winding open gyre of a track
where ev’rything familiar can surprise.

We cannot sound the Spirit with a plumb,
Her depthelessness beyond all human ken.
And should we miss the truth of whence we come
She’ll catch us when we pass this way again.

With ev’ry widened orbit I have found
a breadth of grace beyond what I had hoped;
in ev’ry foreign land familiar ground;
in ev’ry coming home a further scope.

There never was a bottom to Her sea
and ceaselessly Her waves crash over me.