Having established the mind as sacred space and spiritual discipline as the first requirement, the collection now turns to the hardest questions a man can bring to that quiet place — questions of worth, visibility, and ultimate significance. Scott does not ask these questions from despair. He asks them from honest faith, and he finds not a complete answer but a promise sufficient to stand on. This is the collection’s most searching and most universally human poem.

These are the questions I have carried since I was young. Do I measure up? Will I matter? Who really sees me? I do not think I am unusual in carrying them — I think most people carry them and few say so out loud. Writing this poem was my way of saying them out loud. The answer I have found — that I will one day know as I am already known — is not a resolution so much as a promise I have chosen to trust. That trust is what the final stanza describes. It is not certainty. It is faith. And for now that is enough.