The Triumph of the Good

The Triumph of the Good

It seems a quaint notion, doesn't it,

the spiritual and the moral, wearing capes, no doubt,

rising triumphantly over the slumped shoulders

of the material and the unmoral, which I imagine

in rags for some reason, moping away defeated.

Today, in our ultra-modern kitchens and Wi-Fi cafes,

where the material is more like a roommate,

always making noise, always eating up the refrigerator's electricity,

these ancient adversaries loiter in a quiet corner of our mind,

shuffling their feet, waiting for us to notice them.

The spiritual, that wisp of incense trailing from a temple's door,

has been mounting a comeback tour,

a slow infiltration blooming inside our skulls.

Not with fanfare or firework, oh no,

but in the gentle manner of a gardener deadheading petunias.

Meanwhile, the moral, old-fashioned as it is,

with its hand-stitched handkerchiefs and eyebrows raised in concern,

has been edging out the puissant, yet secretly weary unmoral,

whose tactics are as tiresome as an overplayed song.

And on the street, this ongoing battle rarely makes the news—

no, it hums along beneath, threads in a vast tapestry,

where faith, fellowship, and service are not merely words

from an archaic text but cures for most modern ills; they are

the soft-spoken doctors in this world's emergency room.

In the end, there truly is nothing beyond their reach,

no human knot they cannot untangle,

these quiet heroes of the human race,

making the daily, unheralded journey

toward something resembling victory in the ongoing human story. 

No need for a trumpet's call or a finish line's ribbon—

just the steady, imperceptible triumph

of good thoughts over the raucous currency of the now.