Natural life with no parole

That’s what it’s called the men tell me
after our discussion of Matthew Five and
what it means to turn the other cheek,
or not, the latter being the path that
brought them here. But what, I wonder
is a “natural life”? Isn’t it, really, the life
led by everyone, those behind walls and
those without, each of us living the one
life given which is to say there’s no parole
for anyone. Yet listening to the men describe
how they found Jesus, or rather He found
them despite everything, or maybe because,
I think of Paul on the road to Damascus,
the sudden light, blinding, transforming,
reforming, or then again this, a slow inner
revealing, the shy gift of sweet snowdrops