Paths

The road not taken
holds all the poetic promise,
but it always is the road
I’m not on.
I watch others who
ended up in the place
I wanted and believe
the mistake was mine
made at the crossroads
where I had to choose
a direction.
My sense of mistake is
itself an error
fueled by the magical
thinking that had I chosen
differently, my life would have
turned out better, whatever better
may be. I watch others wander this
world, all of us thinking
magically that because
we are not where we intended that
we are not where we’re supposed
to be, when in fact
we are all on the paths
where we are most needed.
–Karen Novak

I imagine the monks gathering, one
by one, dipping forefingers into
basins containing holy water,
touching forehead before
crossing chest, genuflecting.
Rustling of habits as they take
their places in choir to sing
resurrection back into being
one more time.

A monk’s knuckle raps
hard oak and the chant swells,
filling the church’s walls
to bursting, flinging news
heavenward, across a plague ––
scarred land: Jesus lives!
Let us together make this world
for the resurrected Christ,
for all. Let war end;
let love win.

Silence, when it comes at last,
stuns as it spreads, within
and without: a new contagion
crossing boundaries,
invading nations, defeating
death by accepting rather
than passing the cup.
– Ed Davis

* Originally published in The Merton Seasonal: A Quarterly Review, Vol. 47, No. 3, Fall 2022.  Reprinted by permission of poet.