No Thank You: A Selection from Tony Hoagland’s Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (2018)

Wisdom isn’t scarce; it
never was. The average bookshelf
of a Psych major named James
at Cumberland Community College
will yield all the wisdom

that was ever necessary
to end war, teach kindness,
face death,
sprout honesties

like flowers, fashion
codes of understanding for a
working world.
We have

everything we need,
don’t know what the
hell it is, don’t want it, won’t
remind each other, refuse
to listen.

What makes it worse
are the constant bulletins
from all those liars who keep saying,
We are looking

for solutions—Getting
close to—Poised
to make the
breakthrough—Any day now.
Not true. We

already have chosen the strange
garments of confusion
that we will die in; we love
the thrill of enemies;
we burn

through beauty like it was
wrapping paper;
we breathe
the smoke of our distraction
like it was oxygen.

So this morning,
I will just
walk into the woods off Marsden Lane,
seize a clump of dirt and pine-straw
in my fist,
and kneel,

in a manner no different from
any peasant in a jerkin
in the fourteenth century
asking for salvation—

saying, Preserve me, God,
at least
from the pretense
that I am searching.

I am lost by choice
and
all the evidence suggests
I relish it.

—Tony Hoagland, “No Thank You,” Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (2018)