Reflection

I am a modern monk, whose diet's meat,
not pulse, or low-cholestrol diet leaves.
I do not flagellate myself, but weep
for my own sins and pains and others' hurt,
results of both our first and further falls.
I am not walled within my lonely cell,
though oft I enter it instead of curse
the world's chaos, defying chaptered verse,
wherein I read, despite sin, all is well.
For as I read and write within these walls
and ponder our descent from flesh to dirt,
some pattern, sometimes forced, but always deep-
er than the eye at first perceives,
emerges, and the planned and Planner meet.

Edward Hewlett.

This is one of the last (and, in my opinion, best) of the poems I wrote before I became Orthodox and simultaneously became way too busy to write any more [good] poetry.