Squirrel

The mostly shuttered hospital has become a hulk of bricks 

Where children once were born and grandparents passed.

The nurses and doctors have taken the healing arts

Out of this once consecrated space.

 

Agonal breaths of a lung that enlivened this city

Become gasps for a stale air that has receded,

Calling all to a different pile of bricks for the next half generation,

Distributing ineffable mysteries of catharsis.

 

And spying upon the old grounds a new creation springs forth -

A squirrel has taken careful carefree time to bless this tiny maple.

In the crook, in the elbow of a diminutive leafless arbor,

He scratches his ears and watches the rushed and chilly scattering.

 

Barely noticed, he notices each ailing clothed creature.

Does the squirrel judge, does the squirrel spurn, does the squirrel dismiss?

Such destruction of the bonds of creation are impossible

To this perfect beast, enjoying the thistled garden.

 

Caring for his fur, he wipes away the dirt gathered from his journey.

At times on all fours, or else princely only twos, he rests.

He rests knowing that his wooden mast is safety.

And he cleans his ears so that he shall hear God on the breeze.

 

Down from the maple and once more processing upon the earth below,

He again regards us who are commemorating and willing

This manmade hospital to be as glorious as the squirrel in the tree.

And with first created peace, the squirrel heals those who hear and see.

Love is Essential

Loving is essence and essential.

Yet who can maintain it for their mortal dash?

To love is to give 

And to give is to sacrifice.

Love and life will require it all.

Your essence dashed upon the rocks.

Your life scrubbed raw. 

All that is built,

All that is gained,

All that serves,

Shall be required of you at the dread tribunal

Stripping you of pride and glory.

O man, it is not yours to take to your cave.

To give and to love for the dash is the command.

And life’s failure is assured -

As much as the yearly cracking of crooked manacles

Maniacally parades through the shortened days.

To love is to die.

To die is to be stripped.

To be stripped is to be freed so Janus may return.

O man, O people, can you love?

Can you love for your narrowly chiseled moment?

The granite void upon which we hang

It is failure.

To fail in gain is to sacrifice to love.

Essential Business

A choice between two will always be false,

Rather the soul of the cosmos is hierarchy.

To only essentials Caesar calls,

While nonessential is shuttered and under palls.

Proper words for proper things is important to me.

The grocer, the restaurant and car repair

Are no more than base subsistence.

For they do not rise us through the air.

The ripening of new sprout fruit they cannot bear,

No freeing repentance, but arresting abundance

The animal bows his head to the ground,

Sniffing and searching for nourishment there.

Persons too search with necks bent down

Though to not bellies but to spirit wholly bound.

The essence of man is to leave ground for air.

The idolatry of these late essential things

Deprives the marrow from the human soul.

To sit beside the fount of teachings,

To sacrifice hours tutored by readings,

Eviscerates man with a pneumatic hole.

The song of the essentials rises in our chest,

Though basic greed to gather be now multiplied.

We are reared by schools from our immaturest,

The community library gathers all the rest.

In the sanctuary of the Essence is how the soul abides.