The cardinals fight in a corner over their favorite tracts,
While some will gorge and some will starve.
And the old oak silently prays and acts
to show them how far removed they are
from the reason that once filled rhyme by nature
with God's willing sacrifice that they themselves espouse
by beating about the bushes: red wings of stature.
And the gardener weary of the brazen weedy logic that surrounds
the best examples of the truth in beauty seen
is almost ready to use the power tools on it all,
if not for the orange glimmer amidst sickly green:
the cynicism of the age that chokes with gall.
Then as if a prince from some fairy tale, a new Pope with eyes on stalwart hope tears
the briar back, beholds his weakness in the warrior marigold and forgives his peers.
