Advised to search for a hermitage in my heart,
the idea wasn’t completely
a foreign entity to me
but still, it came as a bit of a start.

Thomas Merton lived in a hermitage,
so, mostly, the idea for me
was of a place where one would go and just be.
But in my heart? That might leave me in an orphanage,

occupied by just one lonely one;
and that one would be only, lonely me,
but Peace was there and greeted me
as sure as the rising and setting of the sun.

And I could be with Peace anytime
along the arc of that sun.

*idea from a meditation by Henri Nouwen