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.

Out of the Silent Garden, or, Being Saved By the Quarantine

Doors and windows and stores are shut
Sheltering in place to sacrifice to give life.
To the Least, the lost, the laos.
To walk is a renewed pleasure
Footfall, swish of pantlegs
Echoes and silence.
Patients benefit from the neighbors free gift.
In the cool of the night, domestic sounds waft.
Ages past, analog times.
Too late for too many, sun rays shall again be cast.

Whir of a transformer, the venting of a drier.
And more! Clothes hung on the line.
Cotton cord stretched pole to post.
An old woman tenderly hung the armor of her kin.
    Her back, her fingers, her line bent to the ground.
The Lord assists to the last.
She placed a pole in the center of the droop,
    That old staff guarding the precious vestiture -
The splintered pole has a grand pedigree

In the midst of an ancient forest, a tree was planted
A Silent Gardner choosing its perfect place.
    Dropping its seed, the arbor carpeted creation,
    The great canopy swayed silently from shore to shore.
The silent wood of the Silent Gardner.
Then it gave of itself
    To serve, to be useful, an expression of tangible love.
Seed to shoot to staff.
In time, worn by industrious hands
    Age has caused it to be quite splintery.
Though it still be dutiful in Granny’s garden.

The bent woman, nurturer of the clan
    Silent in her duties, her service,
She is the one who remembers
    Who hums the hymns
    Who hugs the children
    Who holds the family in the hem of her housecoat.

Her chores continue though the world is silenced.
    Sickness without, her homehoned healing within.
The shirts flap, the jeans sway in the silent darkness.
           Come tomorrow, they will soak up the sun
        Harness the wind.         
Bound with the light and life of silent sacrifice.

The Silent Gardner prepared the world
    The silent woman is graced by his love.
The sheltering generation has returned to the one garden.
    Relieved of digital burden.
    Clad in light, blessed by domestic silence.

    Slava tebe, Bozhe nas.  
    Gloir duit, a Dhia.
    Glory to the Thee our God.