to Nancy Henry


I don't know what I am doing here
in a place for believers but I�m walking
and listening to the sounds of our footfalls
and your voice, tender and light
as the light of late September
caressing us like an old lover.

You speak of a monk who tamed
the wolf in you, how he held on,
and tugged against the dark winter
of your life, then let go of the leash,
and you staggered and stopped
to catch your breath.

You take me to where you stood
before you came back, converted,
to this religion--prayer beads now
trouble the fingers of your left hand--
to the spot where the earth seems
to slip away like faith so often does--

the frantic crabs scurrying in tidal muck,
whole clods swooning downward,
cast back into the abyss. We stand
as the several yachts slide in
and out of the estuary,
over shimmering water.

A monk in dark robes seems to hurry
across the water toward us,
his robes dipped in the dappled light,
quite assured of himself, stopping there
on the surface, looking at us quizzically
and inquires, "Have you come for a blessing?"

I look to you for you are
a believer and this is new
to me; you look to me
for I am a skeptic who wants
to believe and might
ask for confirmation
if he is there, as he seems to be--
not floating exactly but standing
as firmly as the imagination does
in times of doubt or in times of need.

Neither of us respond. He is patient
"Perhaps," he smiles lifting his hand
to the sky, the water and
the wooded path we�d come
"this is enough, yes?"

You promise not to tell,
if I didn't. But, maybe,
others should know:
it�s such a lovely spot



�2007 by Bruce Spang