On Beginnings

This white page stands before me,

While the bleet of an summer-born faun enters the air.

I will probably never see her.

She will never see these lines.

But each exists just the same.

My professor opens class with a joke;

A callused pun, spongy and pitted,

It’s humor has eroded like last-year’s leaves,

Blowing in the snapping, hoar-frosted air,

Each aimless in its journey beyond death.

These leaves mix and mingle with the hay

In that wheezing, slanted barn, forgotten on the hill

Which once touched the grey-beaten sky.

Tired, and increasingly snow-laden each

Is ready to give up after years of use.

CHIRP! Zumm! TRILL! and flutter.

Countless Insects hatch, disappear, and mutate.

Without an announcement,

A tear-streaked obituary

Or even a story.

But still they come.

And here is the question of beginnings:

Where do they end?

Are they senseless?

Meaningful?

***

I go to mass on Sunday.

Tried and tired the liturgy takes place.

Motions are made and responses recited

With drooping hands, and mumbled lips.

Few changes become apparent.

Then again,

At the beginning,

Few changes are apparent.

The sower’s work takes but a moment.

A seed's work only finishes with death.