We stumble on flat ground when shouldering the false hopes of doctrine,

grave clothes of religion – its diminishments. Falling headlong

on easy roads we can’t enjoy for our straining to explain.

We scratch at stones, wet from dawn-drenched, day-breath,

looking for what signs of life emerge.

But, it hides itself away in the damp unseen,

crevices unnoticed by all that never knows light.

Beauty grows savage, flowers pushing up through concrete,

stem intact, root-sutured rock.

Water still moves under winter’s deep-crusted yawn.

Finches fly back north to signal summer’s return.

There is a beauty too perfect for vain curiosities,

hope, hunted for, but stuck in the idolatry of certainty.

We are as we are grown, have groaned –

greater in the scars of our days.