I ask God, what is the matter with me?
God says nothing, nothing at all.

I ask the same question of Allah,
expecting a new answer. Allah says,

zip, zero, zilch. You are fine.
I’d ask the Jewish God but I suspect

I’d get a similar answer from him.
I ask a pantheist and get more answers

than I can handle — and forget the atheists
as they don’t let those questions fester;

you are what you are, they say, so you are the guy
who stops thinking of this, eventually — like, now.

I’ve run out of people to ask
so instead I turn to the motley dog.

I turn to the tabby cat, the preening bird,
the okapi, even the cursed Greenland shark

who has been searching for close to
four hundred years and found no answer;

or at least, it’s not one he can share, or
wants to share.

The stones and the dirt are mute;
the asphalt and the steel gates are mute.

At a stray moment much later I read a book
about the Sufis, about sema;

how they dance with one hand facing
the sky to receive divine wisdom

and one hand facing the ground to
distribute it where it belongs;

they whirl and twirl at prayer.
I do the same in daily life

except I don’t know what I’ve found
and will only share it saying

here is what I have learned,
here is what I have;

you must figure it out for yourselves.
I haven’t got a clue — after all

there is the promise I made to one God or another
that it was meant for me,

that it was nothing and as nothing
it was literally, truly designed to be shared.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

onward,
T