Cloister Walk
by Edward A. Dougherty

Perhaps it’s the sacred tree, a yew
permitted to grow in the courtyard,
a greeting as alive as any human;

perhaps it’s the way we enter the place 
through the graveyard, strangely contemporary
as the living continue to bring their dead

amid the roofless abbey ruin, where walls
have stood—hard to say how long—from misted-
over origins and through countless attacks;

or perhaps my heart’s been emptied,
sufficiently prepared to receive
the teachings of stone and open air.

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I stood a long while
before a grave
and its Celtic Cross,

before its wheel
and beams, facing
its embossed knots.

At the base of one:
an upright sign
of infinity, a double

loop stands
and leads up
into an outer band

that turns inward
and through 
the middle

of a circle 
it has yet to make.
Are these knots

saying we’re caught
forever in sin
and suffering?

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