6-1-1952 -- 6-1-2019
Now, I look back on the landmarks
that have brought me to this place,
to this land among the hills of central
Pennsylvania where silence and stillness
and dream have so combined
into a prism through which all go
each person, each feeling, each act
given its own light and fitting in with
the colors of which the heart and soul
have more than seven.
I have, it seems to me,
been following a trail, sign not
overabundant but significant
and showing up where it was needed
and I in limited knowledge
and overwhelming ignorance
had some wild courage inside me
to say, "Yes." Nothing more,
nothing less
and so I learned
the only thing I could teach
myself -- to exercise my right
to decide.
It could have been otherwise.
The only refusal I have ever practiced
is that which I refuse is not mine --
that is the "No" of "Yes."
Even from early, there in the influence
of church, of dad's great preaching,
of mom's beautiful singing
of hymns like they were blues of praise,
I refused to be like unto what the church
would have me be though never
refusing scripture with a quiet assurance
from mom and dad there was something
only I could seek, only something that
could find me:
that was not a common love
but the love I grew up in and have
held to as it has held me.
And like love, there is nothing straight
about it, nothing the mind and thought
inherently appreciate yet if held
to they too begin to trust signs
and wonders beyond their own reason.
So at 67 I am here -- father, grandfather,
retired, divorced in a monastery holding
dreams and desires still leaving
sign for me to follow . . . a monk, a hunter,
a reader, a writer, a lover of all I've been given
and all that yet comes to me
as I go to it reading the signs
that only life can give, those
love notes I keep finding and memorize.
-Byron Hoot
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