Unintentionally I gave up
A nasty habit
On the first day of Lent and now
I wonder if
I can make it to Easter and if it means
Anything anyway.
The things I have given up
In the past –
So many things – I have wanted to hold
Onto the ones
I am giving up now if only
To declare
Some good within the vices
I have left.
But was there so much in what
I chose to avoid
Setting out intentions to cover large
Swaths of time like
Great tents over the desert with a sentry
At the flaps?
Is there so much in what I am not or
Not doing that
I should pitch my nights in Gethsemene?
I feel that
I should not need it and still I return to this
Purgative act.
I wonder at them men who see the world clear and
Continue to toil
For themselves when all I can hear between
Posturing words
Are the madding and proud lamentations
Of a sickness
Undiagnosed. But here, where I lay down what
I gave up
I find the formula and its here and always
In this one place
Where I stand that I will continue to find it
The meretricious
Urge that speaks to our needfulness is
Powerless in
The face of the heart when it smiles at the wrangling
Sins of the mind.