Your face alight,
you tell me you rode ten miles,
a lovely loop, you found an old bike
and took off behind your young cyclist friend
who’d come to visit.  Over his shoulder
he held up his cell phone and videoed you: 
“Here’s Brother Paul,
octogenarian, taking the hills
like a twenty-something!”  

It makes sense
that a monk would relish
chasing the unknown,
stretching out his arms,
lifting his eyes skyward,
chanting the rhythms of his legs,
breathing God out and in, out and in,
in and out.