Friday, June 11, 2010

In My Palm


The Dry Stone Waller Muses About Chipmunks and Transubstantiation


Often chipmunks move in before the wall is thigh high

and, with Franciscan robes and indifference to mallet blows

earthquaking their dark, meditative chambers below,

remind me of Christian mystics leading contemplative lives

while armies catapulted stones against monastary walls

before pillaging meat, grape, and grain for this or that king,

and so I praise these brothers faithfully chanting morning prayers

before bravely foraging acorns through another day where

stone shards might spear into their soft shoulders, though

not keep them, I see, from losing faith in the inherent

goodness of nature as, when the wall is almost complete,

few see evil in the acorns of alms I offer in my palm

and, before eating, look like a priest holding a host

up to the lapsed catholic in me again a believer


by Dennis Camire