FOR THE BROTHERS

 

Charma River smoothly braced, a deep flow
off the main road frames the sky, opening
to the sun slowly crossing the Brothers.

Moments grow before an ossuary fishing for people,
dusting history's jaundiced millions,
exposing riven flames, churning clear again,
hailing the sparse calm known through itself
as God drinks the world.

Highway rises around Eucharist's foliage,
Compline's swale silently shrugging, whiffling
aspirations from atop chapel's human road.

Desert's silence is singing Vespers,
wildflowers chanting, All is dust...

So much is left behind.

 

In Memory of Thomas Merton,
who visited the Monastery of Christ
in the Desert twice, in 1968.