Cursing in the Temple
Brandon Cook
They did not see me as they passed through the trees, down hill and trail
I sat beneath a spreading tree, on a fallen pine rail, above the dale, a hundred feet up, eating fruit
And they were quiet, so I said nothing and even stilled the crunching of my apple
So they could pass by like a deer, heedless of any prying eyes, minding the aura of the untouched all around us
But I felt a small pang of guilt, too, thinking that, should they see me surveying them, they would think my
hiding was spying
And perhaps I was lying by laying by, breaking some unwritten hiker's code, but I simply could not bear to break the quiet
Or the peace that comes among wild things
Suddenly, one of them—the woman—kicked a rock which bounced off a log and back at her
And she yelled a curse word, laughing
It hung so strangely on the morning air, that profanity, glorious in its gory piercing of serenity
As it echoed down the trail and against the rock wall a hundred yards across from us
Like farting in a temple, it was
Profane ink spilled on white sheets
But
The morning just lapped it up,
As a mother wipes up spilled milk
So effortless it absorbed it all, overpowering in its intensity, then gently
Restoring the sound of footfalls and, after a few moments, the crunching of my apple among the song of leaves and birds singing soft through stalks of trees
So Eden is restored not with banging cymbals but the simple mirth of quiet
Like loudness never was on this bright earth
All the while, morning billowed like a great blue ocean all about us
In the temple of the endless world
As the morning whispered that nothing can defile it
And the mountain nodded with a knowing smile