Ultimate Objective Reality

My faith, though growing more vague
the older I get, grows stronger,
having assembled it the way I collect
stones and rocks in the mountains,
the desert, at lakeshores, by rivers,
on Pacific beaches, incidentally,
when it pleases me, to use as paperweights,
to fill blank places in the spring garden.

Now, on a Saturday, after dinner,
after turning into a corner store
to buy the Sunday paper, we see
the proprietor, not behind the counter
but at the end of it, on his knees
on a dull red prayer rug, bowing east,
rocking back on his heels. Again. Again.

We wait, regard the sorry state
of the inventory, the dust, disarray,
swaths on the shelves empty of goods.
Finally, I add the expression
of the eyes in the unshaven face
to my collection: a beatific
stone it is, and, like the others,
nearly unconscious of our being here.

copyright 2007 M. K. Meder
bio
Barnwood magazine
Contents 07