Amilcar's coming of age. |
Amilcar Unleashed Amilcar the hermit, being of a reflective disposition and, moreover, having a natural bent towards solitude, found the demands of his profession too easy for his talents. “It’s no sacrifice,” he said, “to meditate forty days in the desert - ‘tis more my preferred inclination. Enlightenment must surely be reward for challenge endured, the result of privations suffered.” Having these thoughts did not make his job any easier. The obvious alternative, to live a life of debauchery and wild abandon, proved beyond his capabilities, leading him to the proposition that, if enlightenment must be obtained in such a fashion, he was doubtful that he wanted it after all. As can be imagined, this impasse left poor Amilcar without a course of action to be attempted and, for many days, he wandered both physically and spiritually in the wilderness of indecision. In the end he decided that, if his natural talent was to be a hermit, then a hermit he should be, without thought of reward or enlightenment but merely to be true to himself. The next day he woke with a smile on his face, beaming at the world with realisation and joy and relief. Many said that he never looked more like the Buddha than at that moment. Line Count: 42 Free Verse For A Story-Poem Contest, August 2020 No prompt but may not exceed 50 lines. |