How Can It Be? Poem by Kevin Rice

How can it be that you are there
Quiet, hidden and at peace
In the long still silence of the monastery cell
And then, joyful and clamorous
In the eternal songs
Of thunder, waterfall and fire?

How can it be
That, from the first beginnings and beyond,
Your gentle love
Fills to teeming fullness and repletion
The atom and the universe, unceasingly?

How can it be that you gaze
Upon my frailty
Only to love
So deeply what you see?