Unexpected goodness...


Unexpected goodness.

I encountered Guinness

about the time I gained the words to articulate the thought.


And my provincialism then wore thin 

because it could not account 

for the taste of foreign food.


Or put another way


There's something harrowing about the thought

goodness is doing right

because it's right to do. 


For there are few so cruel

as those convinced the harm they do

is done because it's right. 


Or to take another way around,


The rationalist, materialist defense 

against such questions is 

to swear allegiance to “the truth.”


But the genetic practicality that made Grandpa grow vegetables, not flowers,

leads me to question “goodness” and “truth”

that seem not to reckon with experience.

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