Some evenings, I take books off the shelf, and
I thumb through them, too:
the King James Bible, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita—
I try to recall the mythologies they taught me
and the stories they still tell, the mysteries they unfold
and the secrets we cannot understand;
    but always, of course, there is the poetry—
    Whitman and Eliot, Rumi and Rilke and Oliver—
    Their music and their rhythms
    walk with me through ever-shortening days and
    watch with me through dark nights;
    and they feel, somehow, the truest of all,
    speaking as they do of beauty,
    whether I see it or not; and of goodness, surely—
        can I not feel it
        in a thousand ways and words?
        and are these companions not my kin?
        and are they not
        enough?