Why We Should Worship Him

If we’d let him pursue what he was born to do –

construe, construct his ineluctable Utopia –

well, nothing ever would portend again

the barest faint ennui. For all eternity,

he’d take the rarest care of you and me.












.

Temperate Divinities

The temperate divinities that mildly undergird the world

as middle-August slowly whiles and whirls its way to Autumn

soon induce a softer vehicle of change. Sometimes you’ll

hear them hum a range of alto harmonies to ease the season’s

passage out of heat: a sweeter beat, a glide – if it’s allowed

by clouds that don’t take as their wild bride a hurricane – toward

the promise of a habitable pause, the prospect of a journey’s

gentle end. And for that moment, every sorrow will suspend.









.

Apparently to See Them is the Point

They come to let me see them –

apparently to see them is the point.

They don’t know why I try to write

a commentary on their presence:

their presence is, I think, to them, enough.

Because they don’t care if I understand,

they get to haul their whole and subtle grand

complexity into the light: whatever stuff I may

have catalyzed to bring to sight –

whatever ambiguity – whatever odd velleity –

whatever taunts me with a need to know –

whatever that is, they would just as soon

have blow out of the window.

And so their floating permutations go –

emitting now and then a squeak or coo.

And so whatever sense of Soul I’d like

to think is lumbering below continues

its veiled peek-a-boo.





.

Afterlife

Floating in a netherworld

beneath the greeny sea

will one day brim the tidal beats

of you, my dear, and me.










.

A Wayward Grace

Confusion can be elegant.

Morphing through dimensions

into unavailing half-grown

ideologies, bewildering

appurtenances of the mind

and psychic inexactitudes

unwinding into indecision

can confer a wayward grace.

You think you’ll lose

your place – will free-fall

into space – but you don’t,

and won’t.

.

When Push Comes to Shove

When push comes to shove,

as it does when you love,

in French, I cry "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?"

and find myself flat on my ass.

.

Three Monks Sitting Around

Three monks sitting around

in their robes and pajamas to chat.

The day has been long, the night

will be short, and they’re not sure

they want more of that. God

was a motive, they said, for

their jobs, but by now they would

trade with a bat and a ball,

or a bat in a cave, or a rattlesnake,

goose or a mouse. They wouldn’t mind

being a mouse. They wouldn’t mind

being a mouse by half. Being a mouse

made them laugh. Next thing they

knew they were on their knees.

Next thing they knew, they

were sniffing for cheese.






.