For forty years you shall bear the burden of your sins.
And you shall learn what it means to reject me.
And thus the lifetime haul begins.
I doubt if ever I shall be free.

The Israelites wandered for forty years.
I have struggled for seventy.
Absolute belief will not come however many tears.
Will it remain thus for another twenty.

I fear I will never get further than my own Mount Nebo.
Once indeed I did stand there.
All one sees is desert painted in ever shifting shades of yellow.
The land falls away into a vast depression, everything is bare.

So today I just sat in the Blessed Sacrament chapel.
And I found relief as I made my own appeal.

Haiku

We ourselves wander
It might be a long lifetime
In our own desert

[Note: See Numbers 13]