And of the Little That We Do

God of the dew and the dew’s disappearance
of the pelican walking a pier and the
next day’s tsunami
of a face caught in a window and the
window’s blankness and blackness one second later

God in Whose invaluable Presence we rely without
seeing You though I’ve always contended the
orbs of sight through which we see are
proof of You beyond refutation

And into Whose Presence we call on to be
absorbed just as shadows are drawn into both
light and darkness without objection

And how both light and darkness are absorbed
in each other alternatively without objection

And how a crash of cymbals gradually
dies away until one struck note of the
heavenly celesta is audible again

And hoof prints like zippers in the snow over the
hill disappear both in thaw and in more sheets of snowfall

And of pain and its gradual ceasing in
both directions
toward relief or toward the sheer snowfall of totality

There’s a garden out back in the night now
but I know what’s growing and the
riot of color however silent it remains

And the silent multitudes of people whose
mouths are sealed with fear or forbearance
waiting for You to remove their seals personally

like a wine merchant readying his
products for sale knowing how perfectly they’ve aged

This poem is going nowhere but to You
God of an earth whose epiphanies are
ceaseless and constitute a
continuum

Who’s at ease in the knowledge of the
exact shape of the cosmos as if it were a
small sculpture on a table in front of You which You
take up to observe more closely

O God of all this
and of all that we don’t know

and of the little that we do

---

9/12/06 (from In the Realm of Neither)

Categories: Poems