Looking and Seeing

The hardwood trees knocked to see if He was there
and He replied
but He was not there

And the rainfall straight down sought Him
and He Spoke
but He was not where they were

And the fires reached skyward to find Him
with their snaky fingers and His Voice could be
heard entwining among them
but He was not
where embers lay

And oceans rolled and rerolled endlessly seeking
His pleasure and He assured them and their
punctual surfs
but He was not among them

And dolphins dove and heard His dolphin laughter
but He eluded them

And falcons looked with beady eye and heard His
breathing in the wind
but He was not confined

And we look and listen exhort and even
try to command
and in filters the texture of Him
from time to time when our
hearts burst with it or our minds reach their
natural limits

But He is not here in a
here sense
and He is not elsewhere in an
elsewhere sense

Lifting the arm off the record doesn’t silence Him
though He did not speak

And yet His
Word was Spoken

Just as this world is His and Him though it
seems only a token of what
He is

And He is here
but you might not know it

Though His traces leave traces

that openly show it

---

8/27/2006 (from In the Realm of Neither)

Categories: Poems