Trappists in Missouri
Peace is more complicated than a retreat
to a monastery, even though
the silence is gray and soothing
like, let’s say, a cool rain. Here
below the oaks with the acorns
popping under my feet, I am still
listening for the noise I thought
dissipated in the rearview mirror.
At home, I ached for the silence
between the trees, the footpath
down the hill to the river.
In the forest time moves slowly,
the bells in the abbey, the call
to vespers, the cushion, the candle
at the altar, belly and lungs and heart.
A car churns up the gravel road.
Have I missed something in the city,
an email from a friend, an invitation
to a gathering of poets? How eagerly
I left home only to remember it again
like a stone I can’t let go.
Al Ortolani’s newest collection of poems, The Taco Boat, was recently released by NYQ Books. He is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in the Writer’s Almanac and the American Life in Poetry. His most recent publication is a novel, Bull in the Ring, published by Meadow Lark Books. Ortolani is a husband, father, and grandfather, currently entertaining the idea of becoming a hermit. However, his wife prefers the company of the neighborhood feminists, and his dog Stanley refuses to live without Milk-Bone.
Amethyst Review 