An Attitude of Doubt

"Consider the lilies," I heard you say,
in a paragraph that ends
"Oh, ye of little faith,"
and rebelliously I ask, consider what?
Consider its fragile purity,
or the brevity of its life?
What use, this phallic thrust
of pistil and stigma;
that graceful curl of corolla?
What exactly is it I'm to trust,
and how would this delicate beauty --
so quickly dead and gone --
ever serve to reassure me?
When doubt and negativity prevail,
like Hobbes I'm more convinced that life
is "Nasty, brutish, and short."


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