"Well, I'm back," as Sam said at the end of the Lord of the Rings. In the past couple of months we've been nomads, staying for a while with cousins and, in my case, visiting a friend of the family in New York for two weeks. Now I am back at college, comfortably settled in my new apartment with the Devil's Advocate, and classes are already started and going quite well; and the family is preparing to make the final move.

During my visit to New York I was told to look out for the statue of Atlas at the Rockefeller Center, bowing before the Blessed Sacrament he faces through the doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I went, therefore, and admired both church and statue; and a while later this sonnet began to take shape, though it has undergone many revisions since.

Atlas

I walked on broad Fifth Avenue one day
And saw a towering form, a Titan tall,
Holding on high the heavens' heavy ball -
Of strength unequaled such a grand display,
I stood and stared. His bending knee I saw -
Bent, though, in reverence, rather than a fall;
What reverence moved this mightiest man of all,
Bearing the heavens, thus to bow in awe?

Across the avenue I traced his gaze,
Past two proud portals, down high halls of stone
By incense dimmed, aglow with candles' rays,
And in the monstrance bright, a sun ablaze -
The One whom Atlas humbly knelt to own,
And whom all creatures even so must praise!