Sonnet

Provide yourselves with no gold or silver.
Not even with a few coppers for your purses.
A thought bobbed to the surface as on a river.
As I read these words they remain as half remembered verses.

They all seem so utterly true.
What if I had carried them out in a different life.
What if I had followed not the many but the few.
What if I had embraced poverty’s strife.

I have been blest.
I have had home, wife, and family.
I salute those who deny themselves all rest.
They deserve to live happily.

It rests though a niggle in the mind, this call.
Could I ever have given up all.

Haiku

This persistent call
To give up all for his sake
Some will answer it