satisfaction

Julie Baldwin

“Sationes” : A poem about Satisfaction

It amuses when you talk of doing things
As if our calender was thus dictated, like the days of kings,
and instead of replying, I let my mind wander:
Feeling sorry for those who fill the clock and don’t ponder
The un-amusing and ordinary act of eating ice cream
Perhaps bought after watching your team;

Staring at the headlines, but ignoring the news
and I smile and think, yes, this is what I choose:
An organic transition (not yet the flower, but beyond the seed),
not letting the Word get buried in the lede.
No! I decide where and when I want to fly a kite;
happily study the Cross to better understand humanity’s blight;
at some point I’ll wash the dishes and use too much soap;
talk to God and try to cope.

The sun does not always shine bright,
but it’s possible to know wrong, and choose right.
There is a stigma today to say, “I am satisfied”
and so much of history cries out, “At least I tried!”
Made flesh, our Lord hung upon a tree
so that we can freely be.

If this is so, then how can we accept mediocrity, or ever be bored;
and how can there be people who so arrogantly deny the Lord?
I know there are children who are born of parents who never danced,
and those who can’t be happy without their features being artificially enhanced:

so I can’t accept mankind’s dispassionate pleas for more,
when all they do is see living as a chore,
to be completed in the appropriate time
and, in the meanwhile, waiting for a chime.
How is that living? To only live for one:
less convinced of Him, and more seduced by fun.

Books on the topic of this poem may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.

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