believing:  some relationship between beards and belief, between shaving and keeping faith.  In the mountains are monks whose mouths are hidden by hair, hoary, hirsute, opposed to heresy of razors or skeptics.  in their beards live little beetles of dissent, debating. but beneath the skin all is christian, safe, consensus, conversion of questions to simple smells of soup, of autumn, puppies playing by the cabbage.  what good is asking more than sun and secret peaceful growing green of god?  but in the monastery, he wonders about his skull, if it is painted inside with the same flat iconography, when the colors could be more abandon, breathing less of cloistered glassed in candle air.