MENDICANT

There was a time when silence and darkness couldn’t be undone.

Where eyes saw unavoidable endless horizon,

ears heard an unlittered landscape.

When our place was unarticulated,

the depth of our smallness visceral.

Connection without words was consequential,

life demanded movement.

An undeniable focus was required

as hunger and the hungry stalked.

Now we sit not in reverence

but mendicants for meaning.

Wasting away from wastefulness.

Obese with envious tentacles, reaching out for

a dollar, a donut, a weapon, a smoke, the remote

to deafen our desire for the true stillness.

For in that eternal pool, we may find

we followed, no paved, an empty endless path.