Face East
Palms open, we pray.
Napalm swamp of the sunrise:
Name god again day.
There
The god is not there.
And still, it casts a shadow,
as in answered prayer.
Another Question For God
Q: Why
are you not more resolutely high-
minded? You jape, you clown . . .
A: I look down.
Necessity
Re: rain, and the long theological stalemate
concerning its origins, a tale Talmudic
in nuance, Homeric in scope: this was classic Lachrymism
vs. vulgar Micturism, paired like the chromosomes
of our tradition. At stake: the nature of heaven.
At issue: the source of life, in rain. In the event,
the conclusive stroke was dealt by the geochemists,
who by the closing years of the last century had amassed
data demonstrating the identity of rain and tears
to the ninety-seventhth part, in a theorem which survived rigorous peer
review. By contrast, undistilled urine assayed
as correlative only to the sixtieth part, notwithstanding acid
precipitates, adjusted mathematically, allowing for a salt-
correction constant. The question was settled.