It is gone. The last twenty monks left in a bus for a house somewhere north. Praise songs no longer climb the white pines. Prayers no longer smoke evening skies. No monk bows south to the lake or beats his gaunt breast for trespasses past. No confessions within the scent of the shore. No sheep in the barns. No apiary, no fat-sided bees. Only apples hang heavy from branches – and fall.
Night galloped through cloisters, cracked stones from the walls, trampled gardens of lavender and mint. Once, two hundred obeyed their vocations or their own mother’s hearts. So many chants. So many white robes. In their small well-waxed cells, devotions and the splitting of hypothetical hairs. So much cider; there was honey and cream.