Like an emergent moth
I’m flitting up a slope.
Here strips of colored cloth
affixed to every tree
are prayers, the windblown hope
of those who climb to see.
This is a laccolith
upthrust through sediment,
perduring like a myth
through man’s prehistory,
Pa Sapa ’s pediment.
Come climb Bear Butte with me.
Twelve hundred feet in dream
I climb when hope is gone,
when like Red Cloud I seem
ringed by my enemies,
when I have need at dawn
for prayer flags in the trees.
Note: Mato Paha means Bear Butte, and Pa Sapa, Black Hills, in the Sioux language.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Moral Certitude and the Iran War
The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition.…
The Slow Death of England: New and Notable Books
The fate of England is much in the news as popular resistance to mass immigration grows, limits…
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
