“O the . . . mind has mountains . . .
Hold them cheap; / May who ne’er hung there.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sometimes wilderness
is not on a mountain
or in the desert,
but internal, storms
in mind, heart, soul
where there is no shelter
nothing to which to cling
when darkness descends.
What was secure and
steady, is no longer.
Interior life becomes
like trees in a hurricane:
a wild waving of limbs
one cannot fix or stop
or make go away, must
wait for it to blow over.
So it might be wise
to carry within one’s self
a small stub of candle
and at least one match.
