The Treatise of Things

There will come a day when we shall

sit in silence, absolute stillness,

grey in the head and blind as a bat,

our knobbly knees and shaking hands

will search for meaning.

Under the blanket of the night sky

and the shadow of the old amaranth tree,

we will speak in tongues, unfamiliar to

most. The reasoning and reckoning

of things, of the hows and whys

as if this is the culmination

of all things, the zenith

of our journey so far.

We search for God all our lives

only to find him in the wink

of a bubbling stream, in the flutter

of a horsefly’s wing, in the slow release

of laughter and the gentle sighs of a lover.

If there was ever any impetus

to life, it was this —

to grow together,

to grow in softness.