it’s one of those days

though when you really address it

every day is one of those days

in one way or another

the heat stiffling

nearly paralyzing air conditioner no longer something to decide to endure

without

it must

merton said these were penences

I find him after all these years of reading to be

proclaiming things to not so much make saintly statments

as convince himself

I’m not convinced simply

we humans are here and have messed up in heaps of ways

and done well in others

there is no penance for some ambiguous wrong

or right to live here now is simply

to carry on and choose good

or bad

and go on with that

we all after all

turn back into earth

the heat saturating us there

as well as the rains