“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.”
Jack Gilbert
I’ve Been Wondering When God Left
He left us when we were younger, when
My father traded his legs for wheels
and we traded our childhoods for responsibility.
The words of god were poured onto us,
prayer was the great healer, the way for us
to have an able bodied father. I’d cry myself
in prayer every night, my tears were stale, tired,
Holy Water.
“Why, God, did you take him from us?”
But I never got an answer.
I pleaded with him, was convinced to believe
that if I prayed hard enough he’d be healed.
We heard the testimonies. People miraculously cured
from broken legs and broken backs and broken
souls. And the propaganda worked for too long.
We were told he got sick because he stopped praying.
That god had decided to punish him for turning away.
Now I’m wondering when it’s my turn.
אבא
Is it not painful to be forgotten?
To be blown away like the salt being
split from the ocean and cast into the dunes?
Creating calico markings along the coast,
they turn to paint a picture within the land,
a picture that God itself would create
and this is not unlikely. Beauty is not
simply enough to craft such a thing.
The jagged rocks of forgotten shells
that once held souls, loom over sand,
the painter who crafts each dune.
The salt that was cast away runs,
burying itself in the painter’s body.
God turns to ask, “Why is it painful,
to be cast away from the ocean?”
The salt digs deeper, becoming one
with the sand, morphing itself
to resurrect the torn souls
of crustaceans and barnacles.
Buried
I wake up like a stray dog,
wet and weathered, waiting
for the sun to rise.
Pushing myself up off
the asphalt that has
made itself my silken bed.
I shake the dust and the grime
off of my body.
Into the soil
it falls. Planting seeds
that will sprout and
grow, surrounding
my world.
To bury it.
To Lose
My head feels heavy and my neck sways like an elastic chord.
The physical void of an electric chair and the absence of
mechanical assistance leaves me sore.
The void needs to regrow. Lichen filling a woodpeckers mark.