Broken Poem

Broken Poem

9/16/2001

Lord
Don’t hear me wrong:
But how do You hold humming birds
aloft, or blow
feathered clouds
across the azure skies –
Even as the panther pounces
Even as a baby bounces – in his little bounce machine
Even as -- 200 feet of flying tube
frays into
a deafening array
of steel and boiled blood?

Again

And again,

And again.

I would have thought
the Universe should flicker
Like a drain upon the sun,
I would have thought the birds would drop
like tar from the sky –
I would have thought to hear each
voice,
lag behind the mouth with tape d e l a y.
And,
I shouldn’t have been shaken
if electrons died.

But Lord
this ability of yours
the hear one mother giving birth
with joy,
then watch
another broken in a smash of glass and heat
600 mph to 2, in a blink

Is break-
ing me.
I know this feeling can’t be new,

Moms have pulled their sons
by the tons from ovens, cars, and rivers
or this foul aftermath of war ..
And yet the flowers bloom.
And lovers kiss a world away,
in the heat of your blessing.

And stupid children laugh.

I have played these games before.
Once there were too many stars for my local God.
Ten-thousand stars is one thing, but what about ten billion
in my cluster, with some billion clusters more.

I doubted You, but found
You grew bigger than my doubts,
And I swooned beneath the breadth of Your enormity.
But Lord, do you mean to stretch
my mind, till there is nothing left to stretch?

I like my lines of pleasure, clean
against the evil world –
But they are swirled and jabbed and glued
and I must close down now
Or find You bigger still, till
I have no place
left to hold You …

So will you please hold me?

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