I heard of a man
who never owned a
television.  
Instead he bought
a set of solid oak
bookshelves stained
like mahogany.

With the money
he saved on cable,
he filled them with
classics like Plato,
Aristotle, and Dostoyevsky.
He studied Darwin
and Descartes, and
memorized poems by
Whyte and O'Donohue

Because he never
made the switch to
high definition, he
could afford trips to
Rome and Tuscany.
Walking those ancient
streets and resting
in those heavenly fields,

he learned the art
of attentiveness,
minding the
genius loci
of a place,
and setting
one's cadence to
the breath of the wind.

And in the end,
he had a few books
of his own,
but they taught
nothing new
other than
how to truly live.