Wow. Second poem this morning.

...It's going to be an interesting day.

Where to find God

God does not live in boxes.
Rarely if ever will you meet
your place in the universe
while trapped in the routines
and subroutines
that suffocate our cluttered houses.

(Meeting God in the dark,
lying in bed beside a lover
wondering if she's awake
and what drastic means it will take
to save your and her connection
from the dehumanizing preoccupations
the sheer absent-mindedness
that's in the nature of a human mind --
That's another matter!)

God is not Redwood Trees
or the Grand Canyon
or Horsehead Nebula, millions of light years away.
Yes: God is every stone and river,
in the pantheistic and animistic sense.
Absolutely!
But looking there is
picture postcards from someone else's vacation.
Sentimentalized.
Turning the divine into a plastic novelty bauble.

Go for a walk
on a very cold day, alone.
When you start to feel small and lonely,
when everything you are invested in seems meaningless
and you begin wondering how tenuous
all your brittle loves are,
clawing the walls of your mind for
some way to get back to them...

Then you are ready to glimpse God --
in each of those splinters of cosmic mind
that you're so privileged to witness.

Like a thousand warm stars.


January 12, 2005