The Posthole

In need of respite from the life of the mind
and divine contemplation, Mac Aemoc was digging
a posthole when the farmers, who'd left their work
to find him because they were troubled and in need
of answers, came upon him in the bottom field
where the monks in the chapel told them he'd be
in a hole so deep he could've been sinking a well.

The sight of the saint crouched down in it
stopped them in their tracks. He was grunting
under the shovelfuls of earth he threw up,
pumping sweat and cursing when he struck rock,
easing, with gobs of spit, the welts in his palms,
cassock bunched around his knees to keep it clean,
his boxwood crucifix and beads lying in a heap

beside the hole because they were a hindrance
to the work.When the farmers sought to divine
the meaning of this sight and asked the saint,
he explained to them what they already knew -
that the posthole for the corner post - the one
he was digging - needed to be that much deeper
for the post to take the strain and the fence

to last. So, when the hole was as good as dug
and deep enough, and his clear mind clearer
for the labour, he kissed his beads and slipped them
over his head, undid the cassock knot and went back
to practise the art of forgetting himself in his cell.
And the men returned to their work in the fields,
their questions answered and their minds at ease.