Natural theology in the late pandemic

At the National Quarry, aka Cob Lake, a mother and daughter
and their dog stop ahead of me—they want him to chase a squirrel,

but not that squirrel. T. passes, once my student, talking into her phone,
maybe to her grown-up daughter, who will soon marry.

And the endless gossip of water and wind. The old Puritans believed,
despite the evidence of squirrels and maples, that only continual anxiety