St. Benedict's Rule included a key novelty,
in addition to the usual vows of
Poverty, Chastity and Obedience.
It was the vow to stay put.
Not a bad idea, at all.
We've lived here for eleven years,
longer than I've lived anywhere else,
and my roots now stretch for miles around.
When I travel, it's as though I was
attached to a spring, with the other end fixed here.
Hooke's Law pulls me home.
I'm comfortable here. Each square inch of the house
bears the work of our hands. We know it,
and the garden, and the fields about us,
and the neighbours, and their dogs
and cats and chickens and cattle and sheep.
We have no pets of our own, officially,
but we feed a few, unofficially,
and turn a blind eye to various convenient carnivores.
For instance, we look kindly on centipedes,
ever since one made a deep impression on me,
by making an even deeper impression on a marauding slug.
Across the barley-field, on the main road,
I can see throngs heading West for the weekend,
inexplicably abandoning the presumed
comforts of their homes, for what?
It's not as though we are hemmed in, at home.
From here, I can search
the labyrinth of my heart,
climb unexplored crags of mathematics,
and ride upon mad Sweeney's back.
From my attic window, last night,
I could see
twelve million, million, million miles,
to the great galaxy floating
by fair Andromeda's knee.
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