Prelude
The world evades us because it becomes itself again.
—Albert Camus
Getting closer to the monastery,
Carla says she likes Camus’s idea
about the freedom of absurdity.
On the wooded shoulder, a monk
in ochre lifts a wrinkled can—
Bud Light?—from the roadside,
drops it in a yard-waste bag
and disappears around a curve.
I say I can’t imagine happiness in a life
that has no fundamental meaning.
She glances in the mirror. Wouldn’t it
be worse if everything was meaningful?
On your left, she says, as I sail past
the monastery’s gravel turn.
