A Contemplative Poem on
God�s Dwelling Place in
Five Parts and a Footnote
I
You�ve noticed how over time the occasional outburst comes
down to the priceless outcome. Just now, to shamefully confess it,
you flared-up fierce enough to match anything you can remember
anyone�s ever enjoying in the mining camp where you grew up and
learned your manners. The outburst current involved an exclamation
of the aim to ward off cats from the lawn, not for their presence but for
their scat left behind, so to say. An electronic fence to hedge them out,
you hear the self howl, might settle accounts with neighbors all round.
The beloved Early, a mixed terrier, Benji-like in her gentle appearance,
died this time last year about, and life�s not been the same since regarding
the neighbors� critters who�ve settled on the year-young yard of zoysia, inviting.
You can�t help the self wondering when the critters got invited to get involved
in the desert of your days, and just who extended the invitation.
All this serves, as well as a simple sensitive thing could, to draw one into the lap
of luxury, the ease of wording, to write around the idea of �influence.� You have
in mind an effort to surround the notion by noticing its fleshiness and looking at
the bone and tissue and nerve of influence, the affect one thing has on another,
and the other way round. Very likely, the recent outburst is the outcome of
diminishing influence so that focuses the project and its poetic license. You
look for a glimpse of influence at the seat of the soul.
