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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