The Vanity of Our Thoughts
By John Herlihy

Our thoughts are a supreme vanity;
They arrive at our doorstep unasked.
Our musings are a form of insanity,
Gathered from a rich and unlikely past.
They roam freely unleashed, untethered;
They skip and prance through days weathered.
Beelzebub himself, it seems, can do no wrong;
We speak every word and we sing every song.
From where they come, they go back that way,
Without so much as a gesture of dismissal.
They fly overhead in circles like a bird of prey,
Even when reflecting as we read from our missal.
Our thoughts like butterflies surveying the garden,
In search of sweet nectar, with no interest in pardon.