Now and then I post a poem–or hang a poem on this post.  This one was composed, composted, in one of my favorite sanctuaries:  Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California.

Church of Contentment
(Nailed to the Trees)

Meadow on the Southside of Mt. Wittenberg. . .
(Was that not the German dorf
where Luther nailed his theses/feces
on the cathedral door—shit to/on the comfortable?)
Churches need something nailed on their doors—maybe the pastors!
The Crucified One has become weak and impotent,
symbol of the Church who blasphemously
calls itself by the name of The Nailed.

I’m attached here to different trees—
these young soft-tipped firs
gathered ‘round me now
singing their Sunday anthems,
waving their rippling arms in the pneumatic sun.
Their soloist, a clicking, charcoal-hatted bird,
glide-hopping firtop to firtop.
A duet begins with the zzinging bee
hop-gliding on a bass-line
to the massive congregation of
tiny yellow blooms—
with clump upon clump of stout little green ferns,
in this,
the very best church imaginable.

No confining, constricting, restricting
creeds, roofs or walls;
No message or sermon.
Because All,
simply All, every one,
a message
gentle as the deer herd grazing
behind me, across the wind-smoothed field—
a message of what Burns called “meek content.”
And I too, at least in this mountain moment,
share the poet’s
“light, unanxious heart.”

{April 17, 2005. Mount Wittenberg. Point Reyes}