Each month the Drumbeat features a short essay, poem, photos or other reflective pieces authored by one of our brothers. Ongoing submissions are welcome and should be emailed for consideration with subject: “For Drumbeat: Passages” to menswork@cacradicalgrace.org.

 

 

 

Driving up the steep hill, past the farm,
on the road to school with my Son.
We watch a rook, wind buffeted,
stretching his fingered wings, like the
broad black gloves of an undertaker.
He settles softly on an oak’s aging branch.
The wintry sun is in our eyes,
the silhouette of the tree
a skeletal lung, abandoned by its leaves.
My twelve-year-old boy, with the light
in his face is squinting and sneezing.
He catches sight of a hawk standing still
in the sky, until closing its feathered arms
it plummets, a plunging skewering bullet.
‘Its catching rodents in the grass’ I say.
‘It must have great eyesight’ he replies.
Present to the presents of life, the boy.
Present to the presence of death, the man.

by Adrian Scott
Sheffield, England
Men’s Rites of Passage, 2002