Glimpses of Divinity

GLIMPSES OF DIVINITY


1. Beginnings

In the gravel of our drive,
I built roads and rivers, woods
and mountains. I was the force
that animated the trucks
and cars, horses and knights,
cowboys and soldiers. I was
God until Mother called me
for lunch.

I wore a clip-on bow tie
to visit God’s house. There were
so many of them. How could
this fieldstone Methodist one
be His? I didn’t feel a presence
except when sun-lit stained glass
colored floating motes with shafts
of tinted light. Where did God
sleep? Maybe the Baptists
built Him a bedroom.

In the woods I was at home.
Sitting in the cool green fronds
or racing down a rabbit path
through the tangle on the tail
of my dog, I became another
force of nature.

Because my skin was so fair,
Daddy took me to the beach
early. The rising sun cast
a glittering path to Africa.
Before I learned to swim,
I’d claw through the shallow surf
pretending to be a boat
or some newly created
life-form, safely tumbled
on the heaving breast of the sea.



2. Bottoms

As a teenager, I ate enough
psilocybin to see God often.
Shiva danced in oaks. Gaia
blessed Buddha as Raven croaked
a re-creation. Addictions
trumped the divine.

I listened to Pathetique
and I reconsidered God.
My closed-eye-visions resolved
into clear patterns flowing
from Greek keys to paisley
to Celtic knots. Focusing
on space or the denim stretched
on my thigh, I imagined
a force that flows away.

A moment before launching
a sixty thousand ton missile
from the center of a submarine,
I muttered a foxhole prayer.
Don’t let us break in two.

At the bottom, all is brown
or grey or black. A hopeless,
helpless place where I lost all
my answers.



3. Births

In the morning I prayed,
Help me.
At bedtime I prayed,
Thank you,
and, Who are You?
One night She replied,
I am the one who answers
your prayers.
I found faith enough to heal.

At the moment of release
our faces shed all our years.
We rejuvenate. We fly
between the bonfires, maiden
and swain, nymph and faun,
Goddess and God. On our lips
we taste immortality.

An unseen crow caws,
pops its head above the clover
like a black thistle, dances
two hops to the side, and flies
into the woods. She shows me
a dozen paths easily missed.

One day in every twenty,
at sunset I light a lamp.
I honor Her flame all night,
waiting for dawn to bring us
face to face, waiting
for the world to catch fire.