So for forty days and nights sacrifice,
you get a taste of dying to the flesh:
a process wherein you learn the great price
of your worldly pleasures, and thus refresh
your tired soul through purging and denial,
by setting aside one foolish notion
and grasping at another; a trial
of faith, making of it great commotion,
saying, “look at me, I’m so penitent.”
The universe never fills the left hand
without emptying the right. No big deal,
OK? Remember that your life is spent
with a mouth full of much obliged and
a hand full of gimme – and “no” for real.
06 MAR 2003
