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
