I give my devotion
to an ecstasy induced
by observing how

the surface tension of water 
poured carefully
into a small glass

allows the top of the water
to dome slightly
above the lip, thus

revealing itself as neither half full
nor half empty but
more than full 

as physical law works wonders 
without requiring a suspension
of all I know.

Here’s the fingerprint
of a God I can desire:
Gaia allowing for astonishing things

without regard for my particular
presence.  My observation
and ecstasy are beside the point;

my place under Gaia’s skin
is not mine to decide.  Whether I delight
in being here or not is irrelevant.

What matters is not  
that my glass is more than full,
but that what allows it to be so

also allows the water beetles
and skippers to stand out there
on the pond like tiny Saviors

as if it were the most natural
thing in the world
to walk on water.

I believe
God has evolved
to an understanding
of how little 
he in fact
controls — I see

God in Middle Age
relinquishing the historic need
to hold
each of us
too close — I see

chaos descending
for good or
for ill — 

a huge Visage
smiles and 
whistles

“Que Sera, Sera”

On a thick spit of land
where two swift rivers join,
someone’s painted car hoods
with quotes from
Genesis,
the Song, and
Revelation; 
left them standing here 
where they can speak to the foxes,
eagles, and deer,
and perhaps also
to the occasional person 
walking there as a guest
upon the land.

A liquid song over my head
in the highest reach of the pines,
one I’ve never heard…and before me
a tale of the fruit of the Tree,
a mention of an Apple,
a warning of seven seals broken.

What is that calling above me?
It’s not the God of these Scriptures, is
less dire, more urgent.
I am trying, I am trying,
I will get this…first light,
overhead Song,
bubble-chatter
of two rivers joining,
old words rusting…
ah!
I have it! 

Their cobbled religions
put together
from old songs half remembered
stray parental advice
advertising scripts
movie scenes
observations made upon losing virginity
every episode of favored cartoons
lines grabbed from books
sniffed out at yard sales
or learned from peers
better versed in cool
rare T-shirts
and well-shouted poems
seem as valid
as anything put together
by committees of old men
staring suspiciously at past wisdom
scrapping over papyrus and parchment
and vellum
with an eye toward
power

each seems to offer
as much comfort
as the other

and all seem to me
just as distant
from my own God

the Clockmaker
who long ago turned
the Holy Mechanism on
made me a cog
and stepped away
to let me learn the secrets of time
and motion for myself
as I mesh with All
and work in tandem
to bring All
forward

A ragged lamb
on a high rock.  False
thunder in the distance,
perhaps guns far off, perhaps
a tin roof falling in close by,
somewhere I can’t see.  That lamb,

matted and filthy, bleating
in fear and pain, scared perhaps
by the thunder in a blue sky.
I scramble to catch her
before she falls off the edge 
into the ravine below,

but I fail and she falls.
But she doesn’t.  Instead she hovers
in mid-tumble beyond my reach,  
as if held up on a thermal,
as if she is no lamb
but a falcon.  She is a falcon, in fact,

transformed without my seeing
the event; her claws extended
toward me now, as if to keep me
from attempting the rescue
now that it’s no longer needed.

To hell with finding the music
to speak of this.  To hell with
perfect rhyme and set meter
in my telling; I’m no singer
of mystery.  

That ragged lamb
fell, and did not die; the lamb
became a falcon and is threatening
to tear me up.  There is thunder
that is not thunder; there is violence
or tragedy filling the air.  Here was
a miracle that feels foul to me,
feels unbelievable — 
but it was a real lamb, is a real falcon,
a real cliff, a moment that feels real.
Why else am I still sitting here
on the edge,
wondering what I should risk?

A ratmaking God
made us all.  A roach crafting God,
stone breaking God, flashlight God,
dropping a word
on the face of the deep.

God fessed up to his staff
that it was time
to get cracking
on a simulacrum of divinity.

Manmaker God he became.

There’s a book about all this that says
he did both sexes at once,
but then recants  and devolves
into some mumble
about ribs and subservience.
Later there’s calumny
about tempters and women
and swords and fire.  Naked
shame, exile, then fertility,
then kids and
fratricide.  Hell of a good read —

storymaker God, mythspitter God,
Babel-tonguing God,
floodleaker, oh-never-mind
rainbow setter
Deity.  All you can eat
from the bounty buffet.

Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
all that talk
of filling and refilling
a dish full of sticky sweet
that tastes like sucking
on our own bones.

Why do I need
a “Holy Book”
when there is an oak tree
to read?

In the least square of sun
on this hardwood floor
is the promise of eternal life —
see how the grain still glows?
After every transformation,
there is always a remainder
of hope.

And if the scripture
is so knowing and powerful
why does it proscribe
so much that gives meaning and joy
to those who have not heard it?

In the fiber of the pages
there are truths not spoken of
by the ink they bear.

As long as there’s a willing eye
to see these discrepancies
there will be a God
open to new transmissions
of divinity.
And in the arms of the trees,
a birth waiting to grow.

I begin with finding something so attractive

(not by definition beautiful or lovely
but something that compels me to look
without filter or judgment)

I at once believe I am in the presence
of a being or visitation or revelation
from a dimension
we all think exists but until now
have been unable to verify,
and here before me is the proof.

I study it, fall before it,
reach out in vain to touch it
before light or wind or time change it
(or my view of it more likely,
as something this potent
must be infinite, immortal,
immutable) and I am unable
to spend any more of myself
upon it.

I carry it in my head
and rush to find
some place to write,
then damage it
beyond repair while telling
of its perfection.

I try to rebuild it.
I slap words around, cut myself
to improve my ink, lose sleep
over paste and staples and stitches,
and generally make a huge mess
of the story of how
all my time
made sense at last
in the viewing of this
that suspended my cynical breath
and stopped my constant flight away
from hope,

then eventually abandon it to the eyes
and ears of others, hoping
that some day some stranger
may approach me and say,
“Yes!” and that the pulp of time
will stop pulsing again, and that
I may know again
that what I said I saw that day
was indeed what was there.

If there is
a right of return, I

would like to return
to a holy land
fitted to me. In a place

that allows hummingbirds
to be fierce warriors
in their universe
instead of precious gems
in ours, for example,
I may worship
on the scale I prefer,

where every moment
is its own, where the smallest details
are clear and crucial.

Examining their blurs
and hovers, I can say no
to the glorious and impenetrable wings
I have always been told were behind me,

and come back
to the source of flight
itself:  the need to feed,
to thrive and pray, with those of my kind,
and to see those hummingbirds
as my kind, in spirit if not in body;

to stare into the cloud of their wings
at the spark of divine humor
that sits still and smiling
within each.