Ambiguously Wanton Soul

German Lutheran stock, like Bach’s,
might well have been my conscious lot
had my late Bremen-fostered and agnostic
father felt the tiniest bit bothered to accept
the notion that a God required pious labeling.
Episcopalianism and its light politenesses
and soft divides between the well-washed
body and ambiguously wanton soul
instead occasioned my baptismal bowl,

through my late mother’s sensitivity to what
appropriately ought to make a well-bred
human being whole. Humanistic Judaism –
some sense of which was rendered
unto me by my wise friend and confidant,
dear Richard – pitched the luminous idea
that G-d and man were in essential partnership,
without which we would lack quite any hope
at all of the repair of our dashed Firmament –

poor Universe self-evidently suffering from
its bad messy fall. But still I felt an itch for
more of All. “If you see the Buddha, shoot him,”
seemed the only contribution I could make
to any conversation on the subject of religion.
Then I remembered when I worshipped
at the claws of two fat pigeons who devotedly
devoted themselves to their numinous
devotions out the window of my former home –

intimately intimating that the only dome beneath
which one might find the one incontrovertibly
exact reverse of every spiritual lie was their
bright canopy of sky. Nature therefore seemed
the thing with which I might ally – that is, until
I saw these sweet ceramic tchotckes on a shelf
and thought what glory it might be to fashion
icons of perfected self – and worship Art!
One could go on, but I shall not.


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