Five Poems by Tom Montag

 

from

The Old Monk Poems

 

Ha! says the old monk,

when I'm hungry enough

 

I eat the wind.

 

Only old monks can say

the preposterous things,

the old monk says.

 

 

Death holds

no fear for me,

 

the old monk says.

I know I will

 

happily dissolve

to grass and tree,

 

to the humus of

stuff, on to stone, and --

 

yes, yes -- to stars.

 

 

If wanting

is what you want,

 

the old monk said,

it doesn't matter

 

what you get.

 

 

Add

what I have

 

to

what you have --

 

soon

we'll have

 

enough,

the old monk said.

 

Pass it on.

Being a poet, Tom Montag says, is a matter of paying attention to the world and listening to its voices. One of those voices, he says, is "the old monk," who just won't shut up. Montag is also the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013, Seventy at Seventy, and The River Will Tell You, as well as Maybe Holy: Six Old Monk Poems.